Daily Olive Activity Lists

 I was the kind of teacher who loved writing out my lesson plans each week.  I loved filling out my planner and writing down our activities for the week.  I almost created my own planner and designed a unique page for every day and color coded them.  I looked forward to making my planners every August.

All this to say, I decided that I needed some kind of daily accountability to make sure that I was doing all the things that I wanted to with Olive.  Our weeks of being home together have flown by and I want to make sure that I made the most of our time together before she heads off to school.  I love being a stay at home mom and I feel like I have a lot to offer Olive with my background in teaching and just being her mama :)

I knew if I was dropping Olive off at a sitter's house or at a daycare, I'd hope that they were spending their days doing fun learning activities and playing together.  I have similar expectations for myself so I brainstormed a list of things I wanted to do during the day, talked to my husband and got his input and then started making my checklist.    I have made at least four versions of my Daily Olive outlines and am currently using my favorite.  It folds up nicely and I use it as the bookmark in my planner.  I print a new one each week and am enjoying making sure I do these activities with Olive most days.

 I want to say that I don't feel any pressure with these lists.  Some days I leave them blank, when we travel I ignore them and I just enjoy using them for our daily routines.  We do different things every day and check them off in a different order.  When my husband gets home in the evening he loves to do flash cards, read with Olive and play with her.  It really just keeps me aware of things I'd like to do with Olive and helps me to make each area a priority.  Some days we do arts and crafts several times or play outside several times.  We are completely flexible with our plans.

My favorite:

 This was another version I did in the Fall.  I tweeked it multiple times and ultimately decided I didn't want to write out that much info every single day.

 Another version was more of a checklist

and I just decided it would be easier to have consistent items each week instead of recreating the lists each week.  I felt like it was too hard to come up with new things each week or too much work to write out the same things again and again.

As Olive gets older and approaches the preschool age, I envision that my lists will include things like letters, reading, flashcards, field trips, children's museum, traveling experiences, play groups and writing activities.  I'm excited for the things to come and am really trying to cherish every stage (and smile through the occasional tantrums and sass!!)

Maybe this will be helpful to other SAHMs,

moms who are planning out their summers,

or maybe it'll be something fun to file away for the future??

Enjoy!!