16 Daily Schedules for Kids to Keep Everyone on Track
Thanks to these visual reminders, you and your kids can create a helpful daily routine.
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Whether you’re new to homeschooling or just trying to set up better chore habits at home, the key is sticking to a consistent routine. But a daily agenda can sometimes be hard to communicate to kids, who often need to be told things one thousand times (and then instantly forget when you repeat yourself yet again). Save yourself the hassle — and encourage a little bit of independence — by finding a way to make the day’s tasks easy for kids to see and check on their own.
These daily schedules for kids use pictures, icons, and other fun visuals as a way to keep everyone organized, on track, and on the same page as far as the day’s expectations. Some of them use the face of clock, so kids can practice telling time too. Others are purely pictorial, so even toddlers can try to grasp them. You can use them to come up with a class schedule, laying out the days academic and physical activity. Or, you can use them to keep track of household tasks that each kid is responsible for, from brushing teeth to making their lunch to taking out the trash. At the end of each day, everyone will be able to check and see just how much they’ve accomplished.
For older kids, you can use the dry-erase markers included with this set to include a time when you expect these chores to be completed. But for younger ones, you might just be happy that they do them at all, and a big ol' check mark in the box would suffice.
These cute activity tiles attach by velcro to a wooden timetable. You get 44 task tiles (including some blanks), seven weather tiles, seven days-of-the-week tiles, 12 month tiles, four season tiles, and the board to attach them to. If that's not enough, you can order customized tiles, too. (Out of stock on Etsy? Try the at-home printable version — and the printable daily board or weekly board, too.)
Plum Paper's Distance Learning Planner for parents lets you keep tabs on everything: assigned reading logs, distance learning resources, projects in progress, goals, adventure outings, and daily to-dos. You can choose from four different layouts to customize it to the way you organize.
If you're looking for an affordable option, you can get this visual schedule, which comes as a digital file that you have to print yourself. There are 250 activity icons included with the download.
This printable option lets kids see how their weeks will unfold, even if they can't read yet. You can choose the color for your calendar, and the 60 print-yourself cards include academic subjects, family activities, seasons, and events.
PerennialPlanner Daily Schedule Hourly Printable
Juggling multiple kids can make it that much harder to keep everyone's schedules straight, but this editable, printable planner has room for everyone.
If you want a schedule that you can take from room to room with you, this laminated paper bundle includes cards for morning, afternoon, and evening, along with 120 velcro activities.
What you get with this set is lots and lots of magnets, and you can arrange them on any magnetic surface however you wish. It comes with more than 150 magnets, and if you don't have enough magnetic surfaces in your home, you can always get this set that comes with a tri-fold magnetic board to stick everything to. (Out of stock on Amazon? Try their website.)
See your whole week at a glance with this fill-in chalkboard scheduler. Bonus: Since it's not just about chores and academics, you can use it to keep track of your appointments, too.
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These come with cards and clock faces that wipe clean, so you can change them up every day. It comes with 15 cards to use, and there's a pocket where you can store them all.
This visual schedule doesn't come with any clocks or hours/minutes, but it does help set a routine for both morning and evening. The 60 cards are attached by velcro, and there's an "all done" pocket to keep them in when they're not in use.
You can choose what you want these hand-lettered, watercolor cards to say — and you can also pick the letter style and color. Once that's all set, string the cards along a clothesline so your kids can see how the day is going to go.
Melissa & Doug My Magnetic Daily Calendar
If you don't need an hour-by-hour breakdown of the day, but want to keep track of the days, months, and seasons, this magnetic calendar from Melissa & Doug is all you need. It comes on two fabric-hinged dry-erase boards for easy hanging.
For older kids, if you just want to make sure they do enough academics and physical activity in a day and you want to give them the independence to decide for themselves how they're going to arrange their schedules, try these timed activity tokens. You can customize them and create your own set, depending on your family's daily tasks.
If your routines are pretty consistent from day-to-day, you can use this pre-printed pocket chart. It comes with 13 activity cards, 15 clock-face cards, and 20 time cards, which can all be slotted into one of 14 rows of pockets. (Not in stock on Amazon? Try the Learning Resources website.)
Color-Code the Clock
Or you can try this at-home hack: Create a color code for different activities, and color the face of a clock to match. You can either use transparency sheets decorated with stickers, or find dry-erase markers that work on the plastic of glass (as seen in this Instagram). When you're done, the clock becomes your schedule. (The one caveat: You can't change it up every day.)
Marisa (she/her) has covered all things parenting, from the postpartum period through the empty nest, for Good Housekeeping since 2018; previously, she wrote about parents and families at Parents and Working Mother. She lives with her toy-collecting husband and daughter in Brooklyn, where she can be found helping out her team at bar trivia or posting about movies on Twitter and Bluesky.
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