How to Coordinate a Family Calendar

By eHow Home & Garden Editor

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Mondays the kids play soccer, Dad golfs every other Tuesday, and Thursdays Mom works late. How do you keep track of it all? Piece of cake: Create a family planning calendar and message center.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Step1

Mount a large, plastic laminated blank wall calendar in the kitchen. Find one with enough space on each day (week and month) to be able to write in a number of different items. Designate one color dry-erase marker for each family member.

Step2

Teach everyone to write in their appointments, meetings, practice and lesson schedules, book report due dates, social engagements, play dates and activities. Tie this scheduling exercise into your weekly family meeting so everyone stays in the loop. See 267 Plan Family Meetings and 3 Write an Effective To-Do List.

Step3

Make a rule: No one can make any verbal commitment without first consulting the calendar. And no plan can go on the calendar in ink until confirmed by the driver.

Step4

Update individual personal calendars with the master family calendar at the beginning of each week.

Tips & Warnings

See 10 Set Up a Reminder System.
Use colorful stickers as visual scheduling cues to young nonreaders.
Keep a bulletin board next to the calendar to post notes and phone messages.
Teach your family to write critical to-do items on colored sticky notes and place on the appropriate day. Then you can transfer those notes to your own to-do list.