Morning routine magnets are an excellent way to help get through tough mornings getting the kids out the door in time for school. At first my family used a paper checklist that we hung on the wall, but after a while we switched to magnets on the refrigerator. My kids never bothered to check things off of the paper list, so the magnets allowed them to move things from “To Do” to “Done” as they went through their list, allowing both them and me to visually see if they were making good progress. Since the magnets were reusable, it was easy to reset it every morning.
Having a morning checklist of any type set up for my kids was a game changer for us. My kids had so much trouble remembering all the things they had to do, and I spent my mornings asking a billion questions – Did you brush your teeth? Did you brush your hair? Did you pack your math homework? Do you have your shoes for PE today? Are you buying lunch? Writing it all down allowed me to remove it from my mental load and it put the kids way more in charge of themselves. I still tracked to make sure they were getting through the list ok, but I was tracking it, not holding it all in my head. Responsibility for getting ready shifted off of me and onto my kids.
Using The Trip Clip magnets allowed us to easily set it up to handle the fact that different things were needed on different days, primarily because you can customize the magnets before printing them. What I chose to do was to put the day of the week in the text of the magnet so the kids would stop to think what day it was and if they needed their water bottle or library books or if was a soccer practice day.
I just launched a new feature that now makes it easier for parents to make their own set of morning routine magnets. First, you can always start by purchasing a pre-made set of magnets. These 20 magnets are the ones that customers have used the most often over the years:
Alternatively, I’ve now made it possible for you to load in these default 20 images as a starting point for editing them to make your own. To do that, click this link, and then you can click on the text underneath any picture to change it to meet your needs. You can also delete the magnets you don’t need, or add new pictures from the 100s of choices on the left side of the screen. A half sheet of paper will fit 35 magnets.
Once you’ve designed all the magnets you want, turning them into actual magnets is pretty straightforward.
If you need adhesive magnet paper, or access to the clipart, you can buy those things on The Trip Clip website.
You can also use these same tools to make a Hook & Loop checklist.
The Trip Clip Blog 