Your Kids Have Activities. You Have… *Notifications*

Ahhh… back to school. For 24 years of my life I looked forward to back-to-school time. Grade school, college, and then working as a teacher for eight years. (It still feels weird to let August roll by without an anxiety whiplash halfway through!) As my teaching career progressed I saw how heavily schools were leaning into technology reliance. Every little update came through for parents via email. Sometimes these updates were pushed through email via S’more, the digital newsletter company, sometimes through a Schoology update, sometimes a direct email from a teacher or Principal, and more! Shoot- it was hard for ME, as the educator, to keep up with emailing parents multiple times a week! And now that my girls are about to enter a preschool program, I am not looking forward to the information spamming that is about to ensure with keeping track of my kids’ activities.

Keeping track of your kids’ activities is never going to be high on your list of things you can’t wait to do. It’s always going to be an extra chore on the exhaustively long list of daily tasks. (No wonder our parents told us to not grow up so fast!)

Who’s Keeping Track of All This?

So, no matter how you slice it, managing the daily events of the family, which becomes more complex as they grow, is always going to be considered work. As such, you and your partner need to discuss and agree upon who’s plate this extra work is going to each week. Which partner is going to spearhead the keeping track of the kids’ activities? (And be careful thinking this is going to be split 50/50. Chances are it will mainly fall on one person.)

Once you are in agreement of who is going to be the primary tracker of all family events, know that this is going to take work. There is some automating that can be done, but without intention there may be things that fall through the cracks. I like to tell my clients that no system is going to work without the upkeep of that system. My job is to set up that system to be as seamless as possible, but without the intentional upkeep, it all can easily fall apart.

Pick a System You’ll Actually Use

Now, you’re coming to a professional organizer for some information, so I’m obliged to give you some professional recommendations. Whichever method of keeping track of the family’s activies you go with, make sure it vibes with your style. Don’t pick a method aspirationally. You need to make this transition as easy as possible by matching your current habits as closely with this new responsibility as you can.

My Three Different Organizing Methods For When You’re Keeping Track of Kids’ Activities

1. Analog- for those who just can’t with screens anymore.

If you find you’re someone who does best with paper and a pencil/pen, this method could be for you. In my previous career as a middle school teacher, I heavily relied on my paper planner, pencil, and post-its to keep my life organized. And I had A LOT to keep track of. I was often teaching multiple classes, creating those classes from scratch, building those classes into online platforms, managing all the children and their work in those classes, more things than I could ever even remember, and then ALSO my own personal life on top of that! It was insane. But I rarely missed a beat. I didn’t forget anything thanks to my paper planner.

If you know yourself well enough to know you would prefer keeping track of kids’ activities using paper, you’ll need either a paper wall calendar or a personal planner book, post-its, and something to write with. Whether you use a wall calendar or personal planner is entirely up to you and may require some trial and error.

How to keep track of everyone’s activities using a planner or calendar?

When an activity notification comes through (email, school newsletter (S’more lol), class handout, text, What’s App, etc.) it’s best to immediately add it to your planner (even if you choose calendar, we’re going to call it a planner for blog reasons). If you don’t immediately add the activity name, date, time, location, and additional details to your planner, you might forget about it. If you don’t feel like adding it right away or are too busy, you need implement the post-it method.

The post-it method is my favorite. Treat post-its like your stream-of-consciousness to-do list. Always have a post-it up or on your desk. I keep my daily post-it on my kitchen cabinet right above my food prep area. This keeps it out of the hands of my stay at home toddlers, as well as giving me easy access for reminders or organization of specific information needed for the day (quick packing lists, dinner notes, daily to-dos, weekend plans, etc.). For you, use the post-it as a catch-all for anything that comes into your brain that you need to remember or do. This takes the load off of your brain to remember everything. Let the post-it do the heavy listen for you. But you need to remember to follow-up and do your post-it tasks when you get a chunk of time. If you don’t, the post-it will be rendered a graveyard for things you were supposed to do but didn’t. 🪦

Anyways, if you don’t have time to create an official “event” in your planner, make a note to do it on your daily post-it. Then, when you get a second to think, follow through with your post-it task. You’ll be rewarded with being able to cross that task off of your post-it. Nothing better!

2. Digital- the Skylight Touchscreen Planner for families who want a calendar they can actually see.

If you like the idea of a digital calendar but don’t necessarily want everyone staring at their phone every time they need to know what’s happening, the Skylight Touchscreen Planner is worth looking into. It’s essentially a big digital family calendar that lives somewhere in your house rather than being trapped inside everyone’s individual phone. And honestly, I think that distinction is pretty important. One of the problems with family scheduling is that so much of our information is technically available to us, but isn’t actually visible. Your kid’s soccer schedule is in your email, your partner’s work calendar is on their phone, the school calendar is probably in some app you’ve already forgotten the password to, and then there’s the birthday party invitation sitting on the counter that you keep meaning to put somewhere. You can technically find all of this information, but that doesn’t mean your family can actually see it. That’s where a touchscreen family calendar can be really helpful.

The Skylight Touchscreen Planner gives you a centralized place to put your family’s schedule so everyone can see what’s coming up. Instead of asking, “Wait, what do we have going on Thursday?” and then watching your spouse scroll through their phone for three minutes, you can just look at the calendar. And if you have young kids, I especially like the idea of having the family calendar somewhere they can actually see it. Obviously, your four year old probably isn’t going to independently manage the family calendar anytime soon, but they can start understanding that Tuesday is gymnastics day, Friday is Grandma day, and Saturday is the birthday party. The schedule becomes something that’s part of the physical environment of your home instead of something that only exists inside an adult’s phone.

Keeping track of kids’ activities using the Skylight Touchscreen Planner

When you first set up your Skylight Touchscreen Planner, I would start by deciding what information actually belongs on the calendar. The goal isn’t to recreate every single thing that happens in your life. You don’t need to put “eat breakfast” on there unless your household is somehow so chaotic that breakfast requires a calendar invitation. 😂 Instead, focus on things that happen at a specific time or place and that someone in the family needs to know about. Start by adding your family’s recurring activities, like soccer practice, dance, school, music lessons, library days, regular appointments, or whatever else happens on a predictable schedule. This gives you a basic framework before you start throwing one-off events onto the calendar.

Once you’ve got the basics in there, give each child their own color. This is one of my favorite parts of using a digital family calendar because it allows you to glance at the calendar and immediately understand who needs to be where. You could make one child’s activities purple and another child’s green, for example, while keeping family events a separate color. Your spouse’s work schedule could have another color if you actually need it on the family calendar. Don’t go completely insane with the color coding, though. If you have twelve colors and six different calendar categories, you’re going to need a decoder ring just to figure out who has soccer.

After your recurring activities are set up, start adding the random stuff that comes into your life. Birthday parties, school events, dentist appointments, field trips, days off school, “wear pajamas to school” day, which you will inevitably forget until 7:42 a.m. unless it is written somewhere. This is where I would try to develop one really important habit: when new information comes in, put it on the family calendar. If the school sends you an email about a field trip, if the soccer coach sends a new schedule, or you get a text about a birthday party, add it. You don’t want your email inbox, your phone calendar, your kitchen counter, and your memory all functioning as separate scheduling systems because that’s how things get lost.

Don’t forget the mighty post-it!

If you don’t have time to add something immediately, this is where you can still use my beloved post-it method. Write “ADD FIELD TRIP TO SKYLIGHT” on your post-it and move on with your life. The post-it is allowed to temporarily hold the information until you have the time to put it into the actual system. The important part is that the post-it is a holding place, not the final destination. When you do have a minute to add the event, put in the information you’re actually going to need later. If soccer starts at 5:30, don’t just write “soccer.” Add the location and anything else you’re likely to need when you’re rushing out the door. If she needs a uniform, cleats, a water bottle, or special equipment, put that information somewhere you’ll see it. The same thing applies to school events. “Field trip” isn’t nearly as useful as “Field trip — zoo — permission slip due Tuesday — bring packed lunch.” Your future, exhausted self will appreciate the extra information.

Get the family involved with the Skylight

The other thing I like about a centralized touchscreen calendar is that it can help take some of the invisible mental load out of family scheduling. If everyone knows where the family schedule lives, you don’t have to be the person who gets asked every single question. “What’s happening Saturday?” Look at the calendar. “When is Emma’s dentist appointment?” Look at the calendar. “What time is soccer?” LOOK. AT. THE. CALENDAR. Okay, maybe don’t say it quite that aggressively. But you get my point. The calendar shouldn’t become another thing that only you manage. The whole purpose is to create one shared source of information that your family can actually access. And if your family is anything like mine, the real win isn’t having a beautiful calendar. The win is having one place where everyone can figure out what the hell is going on.

3. Digital- Google Calendar for families who already live on their phones.

If you’re not interested in buying another screen for your house, or spending money on a family calendar when you already have a perfectly good calendar sitting on your phone, Google Calendar can work really, really well for keeping track of kids’ activities. The trick is setting it up so that it functions as a family system, rather than just dumping every single event into one giant calendar where everything is the same color and you’re left trying to figure out which kid is supposed to be where. Google Calendar can actually be surprisingly flexible for this because you can have multiple separate calendars living inside the same Google Calendar account. I think this is especially useful if you have more than one child because you can create a separate calendar for each kid while still being able to see everyone’s schedules together.

Keeping track of kids’ activities using Google Calendar

Start by opening Google Calendar and finding the section called “My calendars.” Depending on whether you’re using the app or the desktop version, the exact layout may look a little different, but the basic idea is the same. Create a separate calendar for each child. You might have one called “Kids — Emma,” another called “Kids — Lucy,” and then a general “Family” calendar for things that involve everyone. You could also have a personal calendar for yourself and one for your partner if you need their work schedules included. Once you’ve created them, give each calendar its own color. Now Emma’s soccer, doctor’s appointments, school events, and birthday parties can all live on Emma’s calendar and show up in Emma’s color, while Lucy’s activities show up in Lucy’s color and family events have their own color. You’re not creating five completely separate calendars that you have to check individually. You’re creating separate layers of information that can all be viewed together.

This is where Google Calendar becomes much easier to read, especially when your kids’ schedules start overlapping. Let’s say your Wednesday looks something like this: Emma has soccer at 5:30, Lucy has gymnastics at 6:00, and your husband has a work dinner that night. If all three things are in the same calendar, you have to read every event to figure out who is doing what. If they’re separated into calendars, you can glance at the colors and immediately understand the situation. You can also turn individual calendars on and off depending on what you need to see. Maybe you’re trying to figure out Emma’s schedule for the week and don’t care what Lucy has going on, so you temporarily hide Lucy’s calendar. Or maybe your husband is responsible for getting Lucy somewhere and wants to see her schedule without having to sort through everyone else’s activities. This is one of the reasons I prefer thinking of these as separate calendars inside one family calendar rather than thinking of them as completely separate systems.

Staying organized within Google Calendar

When you create a new event, Google Calendar gives you the option to select which calendar the event belongs to, so make a habit of putting it in the correct place. If you’re adding Emma’s soccer practice, select Emma’s calendar. If you’re adding a family birthday dinner, put it on the Family calendar. This might feel slightly annoying at first because you’re adding one extra step to creating an event, but it becomes second nature pretty quickly. And the payoff is that you can later filter the calendar by child, activity, or family member without having to rebuild your entire system. If your child is old enough to have their own Google account, you can also think about what information they need access to as they get older, but when they’re little, the important thing is making sure the adults and caregivers who actually need the information can see it.

When keeping track of kids’ activities, I would also use the calendar event itself to hold the information you need to actually make the activity happen. If soccer starts at 5:30, put the location in the event and, if useful, include the field address. Add the coach’s information if you need it, and include a note about what your kid needs to bring. If there’s a birthday party, put the address, RSVP information, and anything you need to bring directly into the event. If there’s a school event, put the important details directly into the calendar instead of leaving the original email buried in your inbox. “Field trip” isn’t enough information when you’re trying to figure out what the hell you’re supposed to do at 7 a.m. on Thursday. “Field trip — COSI — packed lunch — permission slip due Monday” is much more useful. The more information you can put into the system when you first receive it, the less you’re asking your brain to remember later.

For activities that happen every week, use Google Calendar’s recurring event feature instead of creating each event individually. If soccer happens every Tuesday at 5:30, create the event once and set it to repeat weekly. You can do the same thing for dance, gymnastics, music lessons, regular appointments, or whatever else is actually predictable in your family’s schedule. This makes your calendar much easier to maintain because you’re not constantly recreating the same information. Just be careful with recurring events when you’re dealing with seasonal activities or schedules that change frequently. If soccer changes locations every few weeks or only runs for eight weeks, don’t blindly create a recurring event for the entire year and then forget about it. Otherwise, you’ll eventually have a calendar full of imaginary soccer practices that your kid is absolutely not attending.

Don’t let Google Calendar become another thing only one parent thinks about.

A family calendar doesn’t work particularly well for keeping track of kids’ activities if it’s only accessible to one parent. If you’re using Google Calendar as your family’s main scheduling system, share the appropriate calendars with your spouse or other caregivers so the people who are responsible for getting kids where they need to be can actually see the information. You can decide how much access each person needs depending on your family. Your spouse may need to be able to add and edit events, while a babysitter or grandparent might only need to see the schedule. The goal is to stop making one person the family’s information database. If your partner has to text you every time they need to know when soccer ends, the calendar isn’t actually doing its job.

And here’s where I think people can get tripped up with digital calendars: you don’t necessarily need to put everything in one place. Your personal calendar can still be your personal calendar and your work calendar can still be your work calendar, but the information that affects the family should be visible to the people who need it. The family calendar should answer the basic questions of where you need to be, who needs to be there, when you need to be there, and what you need to do or bring beforehand. You don’t need to turn Google Calendar into a giant digital version of your brain. You just need to get the information out of your brain and into a place where the people who need it can actually find it.

And this is the part I really want to emphasize with any digital family scheduling system: the calendar is the source of truth. If an activity is only in an email, it isn’t on the calendar yet. If it’s written on a piece of paper, it isn’t on the calendar yet. If your spouse mentioned it to you while you were brushing your teeth, it definitely isn’t on the calendar yet. Get it into the system. You can still use your post-it for those moments when you don’t have time to do it immediately. Just write “ADD DENTIST TO GOOGLE CALENDAR” and move on. Because the goal isn’t to create a perfect digital system. The goal is to stop making your brain remember 900 tiny pieces of information about your children, your work, your spouse, your house, and what everyone is supposed to be doing at 5:30 on Thursday.

Find the system for keeping track of kids’ activities that works for YOUR family

At the end of the day, there isn’t one magical system for keeping track of kids’ activities. Some people genuinely love a paper planner and the satisfaction of physically crossing something off. Some families need a giant touchscreen calendar staring them in the face every time they walk through the kitchen. And some of us are perfectly happy keeping everything on our phones. The important thing is choosing the system that you will actually use and, more importantly, actually maintain.

Remember, the goal isn’t to have the prettiest calendar or the most technologically advanced system. It’s to get all of that information out of your brain and into one reliable place so you aren’t constantly trying to remember who needs to be where, when they need to be there, and what the hell they’re supposed to bring. Your kids’ activities are probably only going to get more complicated as they get older, so finding a system that works for your family now will make the inevitable increase in schedules, emails, notifications, and activities a whole lot easier to manage. You don’t need a perfect system. You just need one that keeps you from forgetting about pajama day! Good luck this school year!