Hey there, it’s Mark from @Menwhobullet on Instagram and Youtube. There is no doubt that 2020 has been an unprecedented time for so many of us. Navigating a global pandemic, working fully remote, and in the cases of parents, having our children learning at home. In today's blog post, we are going to be talking about creating trackers and journal ideas that can be helpful for kids. 

These ideas will be simple and ones that kids can help create and fill out themselves. If they are small, these can be really fun projects to do with them. What is most important about trying any of these out is that you and your kids have fun with them. No one needs more stress in their lives right now 😉 . 

All of these one-page ideas can be used in any of the Archer and Olive notebooks. The examples from this post, and the printable, were designed in the A5 sized journals.

I started my research for this blog post by asking my own children what they would find helpful to track and write about. My daughters are 10 and 8 and both have started the school year learning remotely. From there I using my planner brain and started to think up some fun and interesting ways to incorporate these ideas into daily or weekly pages for kids (and adults too).

Here are some ideas that we came up with:

What can you track daily? Daily Activity Tracking

At home or in school, activity is so important for their minds and bodies. My girls and I talked about physical and mental activities they could track. 

• Reading
• Stretching
• Walking
• Running
• Playing
• Jumping Rope
• Word Puzzles

So for this example, I took a simple circle and split it up into 4 sections. We made a goal of being active for 1 hour each day. So each piece of the pie stands for 15 minutes. In each 15 minute block we put the activity we wanted to track. Next we made a key to show the color and/or pattern we were going to use to show and track the time we spent.

Creating A Daily Visual Checklist in your bullet journal

As school starts up, forming good habits and a schedule is a great way to ensure your child is learning and paying attention to their days. This daily visual checklist is a great way to set reminder for your child and give them hints as to what they can do with their down time during the day. Doodling out a visual can be really helpful for smaller children. For older children, have them draw in their own doodle once they complete their task. 

Mood Tracking in your bullet journal

Tracking how you are feeling is normal and healthy and can connect a lot to how your day and week can play out. For kids, it’s no different. I have found that my kids do okay at sharing how they are feeling. Sometimes it's at a simple, “I’m okay” and sometimes when I ask a little more and they pour it all out. So I thought that tracking feelings and emotion, especially now, would be a really good way to get the conversations going.

The first idea is a quick and easy daily tracker. On the left side, your child can draw their emotion. Are they happy, sad, excited, or sleepy? And on the right, they can write out what that expression means. 

For a more visually exciting version of this, work with your child to create a key with colors and patterns for their emotion. Create a grid by week or days and have them draw in their feelings that day using the color or pattern. At the end of the month you will have a really cool tracker all filled out and you can think and talk about the colors and what made them feel that certain way.

How to create Reflection time in your BuJo

Another engaging conversation starter I have used myself with my girls is asking them about their favorites. “What was your favorite part of your day”, “What was the one thing you have the most fun thing doing at school this week”?
So I created an end of week reflection page that kids could use to think about how everything went. Again, another brainstorm with the kids created these topics. But there could be whatever you think is important for your kids, as well as their grade level. They can write it out or draw a picture each week 

Creating a Sleep Tracker in your Bullet journal

As an adult I really enjoy a sleep tracker for myself. I can usually connect how I feel in a day to how much sleep I am getting. I’ve found that pairing a sleep tracker with a mood tracker to be really helpful. The same can go for children. A sleep tracker is a gret way to also introduce math and data into their day in a really fun way.

Create a simple graph or chart adding the days of the week and a span of time. In this example I use Monday through Friday on bottom and between 6 hours and 12 hours of sleep on the left. Each day have your child write down when they went to bed and what time they woke up. They can put that time on the graph and mark it with a color or a dot. At the end of the week they can connect their dots and look back at how they did that week.

Putting It All Together

If you think that your child is ready for a Bullet Journal or planner, then I say go for it. It’s a great way to keep track of your priorities as well as your weekly and daily tasks. If they aren't ready just yet for the whole method, introduce them to a weekly page where they can track notes and tasks. You can also introduce some of the other ideas mentioned above into this page, or pages, and create a really informative and productive tool for your kid(s). 
 

There are a lot of really fun and exciting ideas out there for you to try with your little ones (or not so little ones) that can be really useful tools for them to use during school. If they really get into it, give them some fun stickers to add into their notes and plans. It could be a great reward for keeping up with their school work and tasks. Who knows, maybe you could have a fun weekly planning session with them to prepare for the week. 

Download the printable here!

How to create a planner for your kids!

Here’s a video on how you can create your own trackers as well as some helpful printables you can try if you don’t have a notebook or planner handy just yet.