Daily activity log for children?

Question

My kid is 3 year old and I want to use this DAL as a general guide for monitoring and developing my kid..Do you have any experiences with this b4 or any suggestions?? I have just heared about it from my pediatrician and have No Clue How to start!!!!!

Answer 1

Someone had commented that my "question was too long"...but I'm finding that there are a lot of generals out here and I'm not exactly sure what people are asking.  No offense meant... I'm just not sure what you are asking.

A daily activity log is very general...did your pediatrician give you a suggestion?  I provide a daily activity log to the parents of the children in my care...but I'm sure that's not what you mean because all it covers is what they ate, when they napped, general comments, and some of the things we did that day.

I've also used a daily activity log in the classroom... it was an "observation technique" that I used to find out which children visited which centers over a period of time.  It was simply a sheet with the children's names and the names of the centers and about every ten minutes I just marked where each child was.  That gave me great info by the way!

For your own child?  Is there a behavior that you are trying to work with or is he developmentally behind?  Maybe you can add a few details?

Answer 2

I'm a little confused, too, Day.  You mentioned that you want to track your child's development.  Even that can cover many areas.  You could be tracking his/her physical development (tasks such as writing, running, tumbling, cutting skills), cognitive development (colors, number concepts, reading skills), social development (how s/he relates to others), etc.  Eating patterns are useful to track if a child is struggling with health or behavior issues that could be related to what s/he eats.  

My suggestion is that you decide why you're keeping the DAL and focus on that area to start.  It doesn't have to be complicated.  A spiral bound notebook will do the trick.  It's kind of like a journal.  You just want to sit down and begin to watch your child closely when s/he is engaged in the activity(ies) you want to monitor.  Write down your observations.  Try to step out of the picture and write just the facts as you see or hear them.  Try not to interpret why the child said or did something.  As you begin to do this, you will be amazed at what you're seeing or hearing that you probably never noticed before about your child.  You will also begin to see where s/he is in the developmental process, so you can offer him/her new activities or discussions to pull your child along to the next step.  If you're interested, you can find developmental guidelines for three-year-olds on the internet.  Just type "developmental guidelines" into a search engine.  

As you get more comfortable, you may want to observe other developmental areas.  Or you could cover a different developmental area every week - Observe physical development during week one, social development during week two, etc.  This way, you can observe all aspects of your child's growth and compare your child's progress from one month to the next.  

I hope that helps!

Answer 3

See the mush-rooms for our children. during summer holidays!