My Wall Calendar review

So as you may be aware from my Instagram and Facebook post, I made my own wall calendar/planner/educational thing for my three year old.  Aside from a few production mistakes which I have yet to rectify, the planner has been largely successful.

The Month section

The whole planner is laminated so you can write on it with a white board pen to note which days are extra special, however you still can use the grey stars to denote that the day it is on, is a 'special' day.  The red dots need to be relocated every month as it means that it is a weekend.  The month itself also needs to be changed.  There seems to be a correlation in my household of grey stars and weekends as they are always together.

The yellow star is used to show what day it is.  Practically speaking, my three-year old can count and read up to ten confidently so days 1-10 are usually correctly placed.  Beyond this, it seems as though some days she can extend this and seem like genius.  Other days I despair.

Weekdays, Seasons and Weather section

I think it is fairly safe to say that during the design stage I lost a bit of steam.  This section is probably the most flawed but also where the most effort was used.

The weekdays are in a form of a caterpillar on a leaf.  I appreciate this may not be obvious.  The little one has to work out what day of the week it is and put it on the blue section.  They also have to work out what the weather is and also put in the blue section.  The scene on the right hand side describes the season.  They are detachable and each season is depicted by these detachable sections.  So for example, the tree in autumn season is just orange.  I could have tried to be more artistic but that fence took it all out of me.

The Activity section

This is particularly special as I imagine, very different in each household.  This allows the little one to choose what three activities that we must complete over the week - usually the weekend.

As I write, the little one is with her grandparents and daddy, going for a walk on a British coastal area.  I think that ticks everything she asked for.  I appreciate I am not there but we will gloss over that .

Generally speaking, the planner is really useful as I regularly get asked when something is happening and I struggle with explaining that '[Child's name] is coming for a play date in a few weeks time'. I usually have a response that requires further explanations that no amount of Chinese or English will satisfy.  So this has helped.

I am sure a child psychologist can explain why my child has been taught simple weather types in both languages since September last year and has affirmed knowledge in different ways but when asked in whichever language, 'what is the weather today?' it is greeted with a coy ' i don't know'.  My response is usually loving, nurturing and encouraging in a scene very idyllic of a parent and child interaction.  In actual fact my head is screaming 'you know it, you know it, oh my gosh, you know this!'.  But back to the planner, this helps because we can discuss what to wear for the day.

In conclusion, as much as this is home made and I am the creator, it is pretty useful.  There are a few parts I would change but it has been in use for over a month now and the little one does refer to it still, so all in all a successful project.

My next one is going to relate to time.

If you are interested in this, please let me know as I am open to selling this (with amendments made).