daily calendar & weather board

We liked the idea of incorporating the days of the week, months, seasons, weather, concept of today, yesterday and tomorrow in one easy SMALL convenient way.  I looked all over at different systems and while they were SO fun and great.. they were larger than the space I had.

I bought a 7-day magnetic white board from Office Max.  It stuck to our ‘magnet wall’ made of multiple IKEA Spontan boards .  Then I created some weather graphics, some found online, others I hand-drew in photoshop, printed them out in color and laminated them with a magnetic strip on the back using our XYRON laminating machine – it has a bunch of different cartridges: magnetic, sticker, re-positionable, adhesive, laminate etc.  Popped them into the circular magnetic tins (Grundtal) from IKEA for storage right next to the calendar.  I made a TODAY, YESTERDAY and TOMORROW graphic, magnet laminated them too and cut them out.  We simply write the MONTH, YEAR and SEASON on bright paper and switch out accordingly.

So the daily routine is SUPER quick. BamBam moves the tags for ‘today’ etc. to the right spots. He checks the weather and puts the right graphic on that day.  (Here in AZ…. is mostly on ‘sunny’….. BUT we have had some VERY exciting opportunities to run and put on the ‘DUST STORM’ magnet !! We’ve also had hail storms too, and some very cool monsoon lightning storms as well – so while most days are plain… the fun ones are really fun.)

Now that he’s writing and very good at his numbers, he writes the dates himself now. We also write in major events, like church, swimming, co-op, martial arts, parties etc. on there too.

We’ve used it for 2 years now ? and works great. It’s getting a bit scratched up, may replace one day with a fresh one. I do prefer the 7-day over the whole month version because it gives more frequent practice for number date writing and again, lack of space.