Updating My Daughter’s Visual Schedule Board
My daughter's visual schedule board needs a little bit of an update. She's three years older than when I originally made it, and the frame I was using just doesn't have enough space to put as many activities throughout the day as my daughter would like.
Updating My Daughter’s Visual Schedule Board | Updating the Board
First, I needed to take it off of her house bed. I needed to remove all of the velcro, but wanted to save as much as possible so I could reuse it. I removed everything from the original frame and then started laying out the new frame. The frame I used is one I already had lying around. It is technically a shadow box I got at Michaels when they were doing a buy one get one free sale.
At first I was going to stick with the frame being vertical because then I could just put it in the exact same spot on the outside of her house bed. The more I laid all of the cards out, the more I realized I still had a lot of room left and I thought it would be better if I actually switched the frame to be horizontal instead. The one hiccup with this was it wouldn't fit on the outside of the house bed; however, it would fit under her window so that's where I'm going to put it. This actually gives me a whole lot more space to put activities for throughout the day. She's almost seven now and wants to know all of the different things that are happening throughout the day as well as wanting to make plans.
Using a bigger frame and having it horizontal meant I can now fit eight activities for each section of the day, which is morning, afternoon, and evening, as opposed to the smaller frame where I was only able to fit four activities per section of the day. Once I got everything organized again, I hung the frame on the wall, right under her window, because it's super easy for her to see, and then put everything back together. Now she has a much larger space for her visual schedule board and it is in a prominent part of her room.
This really is something that anyone can use. You do not need to be autistic to use it! It's great for people who have anxiety or need some sort of reminder of what their day is going to be like.
Updating My Daughter’s Visual Schedule Board | The “Why” Behind the Visual Schedule Board
If you're new here, in 2020, my daughter was diagnosed as autistic and placed in a special education preschool class and then COVID hit a month and a half later. I was trying to homeschool my autistic daughter. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. She was very limited in her verbal abilities and really didn't have a whole lot of other ways of communicating yet but I knew they did something similar to this in her preschool class at school. So I made a version of it and I've perfected it over the years.
In 2022, I launched three different visual schedule boards. They are definitely targeted towards autistic people and were made with input from autistic people, not just my daughter, but also my autistic older brother. There's a visual schedule board targeted more towards kids (the one I use for my daughter) and then one for teenagers/young adults, and then there's one for adults.
Last year, my husband and my friend also translated all of them into Spanish so for $5 a piece you get them in both English and Spanish.
You can find the links for all the materials you need to create this below as well as the all six of the downloads, the child, young adult, and teenager and adult versions in English and in Spanish that are available in the shop.
Prepping A Visual Schedule Board | Shop
