Print this and hang it next to your kid’s computer at home. Talk it over with them, too, to make sure they fully understand the importance of verifying information before spreading it farther, how permanent their posts really are, and how easy it can be to be hurtful when you’re hiding behind a screen.
I created this checklist with middle schoolers in mind, but many adults would probably benefit from remembering these rules as well!
These are all new issues for our generation of parents – we’re all learning as we go. The responsibility of raising good digital citizens is a big one, and we have to learn fast. Each of us sets the tone for ourselves, for our kids, and for our global online community with every post we make. We should all stop and think before we post about what we want that community to look like!
Let your kids participate in election day with their own, kid-friendly ballot! They can vote for what you have for dinner, and help choose how your family will spend the day or evening. It’s a great way to involve them in election day and start teaching them a little about the election process and how it works.
You can also edit these categories to be whatever you want them to be. If you try it, send me your ballot at molly@thetripclip.com, or just let me know if your kids enjoyed voting!
I received some good feedback from teachers about my discount for schools, and have made some small changes as a result.
Individual teachers can now get 30% off
Schools can get 75% off with a purchase of 5 or more accounts
The Trip Clip is a great resource for teachers. You’ll find an easy way to make a picture checklist of the day’s schedule, reading BINGO, a custom word search maker great for practicing spelling lists, and other tools so you can make healthy snack suggestions, exercise trackers, and more!
One surprising impact of the Coronavirus at my house is how many more reminders my middle schooler seems to need now. Although he used to be pretty self-sufficient, the combination of staying at home for 6 months, having no scheduled activities, and mostly playing video games during that time, seems to have set him back. With school fully online, he is struggling with the lack of structure and daily comings and goings that helped him stay on top of everything. Even basic tasks like showering regularly, have fallen by the wayside (and who among us hasn’t skipped the occasional shower when we know we’re not leaving the house?).
To counteract this, we are trying a new organizer for him that I created with The Trip Clip.
Each day he fills this out, making a plan for when he will do each of these things that day, and then it’s up to him to make sure he follows his plan and gets everything done by the end of the day. It puts him in charge of his schedule, and removes the burden for me to remember to check on all of these things each day – I can just ask him how he’s doing on his organizer for today.
Without this list, he was occasionally waiting until an hour before bedtime to start homework, having forgotten that he was also supposed to exercise (because there’s no soccer now), practice his instrument, and leave some time to shower and read before bed. He also wouldn’t check how much schoolwork he had until he sat down to do it, and then would get overwhelmed by how much there was to do. Maybe it’s the fact that he only has his classes 2 days each week, and so the workload is bigger with multiple days break between, but he is having a lot of trouble keeping in his head what he has to do for each class and seems perpetually surprised by all the assignments.
This planner is helping him recognize that he has more than an hour of responsibilities every day in addition to online school, and he’s going to need to work on his time management skills to get it all done.
If you try this, or you have another system for helping your kids get through online school, I’d love to hear about it in the comments!
You can make a hook & loop morning routine checklist in Spanish, or any language you want! The Trip Clip website makes it easy because you can edit the text next to any picture.
I’ve added more clipart to the Lunch Box Checklist. This is a great tool to help your kids make a healthy lunch – whether they’re taking it to school, or eating lunch at home! You can try this for free, or make your own here.
A visual chart can be a great way to help reinforce positive behaviors. You can try this chart as is for free, or use TheTripClip.com to edit it and make it just right for your family.
I continue to get lots of great requests for images to add to the School Schedule activity. Below are the latest additions. You can see the full collection here!
Here are 2 back to school lists that are great for kids who need to be able to see and feel their progress through their list.
The morning routine list is magnetic – you can hang it on your fridge or on a cookie sheet. You can also make this as a hook and loop list if you prefer. It’s fully customizable so you can choose your pictures and write your own text:
The school schedule is hook and loop so it can be easily carried from room to room, but you can make it magnetic too if you prefer! Like the morning routine list, you can choose your own pictures and write your own text.
My kids are doing online school only, and our district has set it up so they half their classes on Mon/Thurs, and the other half on Tues/Fri:
