I've been in the process turning a room in our home into my daughter's playroom and eventual homeschool room. One element of the room I knew I wanted to DIY was a “morning board.” In this post, you'll learn how to create a DIY morning board for your homeschool room – or mini command center. It's a daily schedule perfect for toddlers and preschoolers who are just learning how schedules/school kind of works.
While I was REALLY excited about the project, I was also dreading it because it required cutting a lot of small pieces (12 months, 7 days of the week, 31 numbers, 26 letters, etc.) So I'm thrilled to partner with Cricut on the video tutorial below who gifted me a Cricut Explore Air 2 which made things SO much easier.
You can do this project without a Cricut but it will massively save you time – and a hand ache! Plus I created a little laminating hack using my Cricut that will make easier than you can imagine! Especially if you've ever tried to cut or laminate with contact paper you know just how annoying the process can be! But not with a Cricut!
DIY Morning Board: Homeschool Room Ideas for Schedule Organization with Cricut
Before we get into the Cricut tutorial and cutting, let's talk about the design.
I knew I wanted to have the month, date, and days of the week on the board.
So I was actually VERY intentional with the colors I chose for the months and days of the week. One of my friends is a color energy reader who taught me that all of the months, dates, and years actually are associated with a color, which has an energetic frequency. So with that in mind, I actually create each month's label to align with it's energetic color.
Color energy associated with each month:
- January is associated with red and is all about action
- February is associated with orange and is all about being around people, nurturing, intuition, and joy
- March is associated with yellow and is all about planning, dreaming, independence, humor, learning, and mental stimulation
- April is associated with green and is all about nature, giving/receiving, openness, growth
- May is associated with blue and all about singing, writing, chanting, and storytelling – really finding the voice within
- June is associated with indigo and all about intuition, self reflection, and creativity
- July is associated with purple and all about manifesting and performing (acting, dancing, etc.)
- August is associated with magenta and is all about balance and innovation
- September is associated with gold and is all about manifesting, happiness, sharing your inner gifts with others
- October is associated with red and is all about action
- November is associated with orange and is all about being around people, nurturing, intuition, and joy
- December is associated with yellow and is all about planning, dreaming, independence, humor, learning, and mental stimulation
The days of the week actually are ruled by a planet and each planet is associated with a color.
Color and planet associated with each day of the week:
- Saturday is actually Saturn Day which is associated with the color black,
- Sunday is Sun Day which is associated with yellow
- Monday is Moon Day which is associated with silver, light blue, and white
- Tuesday is ruled by Mars Day which is associated with red
- Wednesday is ruled by Mercury which is associated with grey
- Thursday is ruled by Jupiter which is associated with blue
- Friday is ruled by Venus which is associated with pink
Feelings Corner
The other aspect of the board is emotional intelligence. I wanted to start working on identifying feelings, but not identifying as them. A lot of other morning boards like this just have a thing that says “I'm Feeling” – but a little language hack for you: when we say “I'm feeling” or “I feel” we create a permanent state of that energetic frequency of the feeling. So it was really important to me in creating this, that we used the language “currently” or “right now” to showcase that the feeling is not who we are or permanent.
Real life example of this and how powerful it is: a few years ago I was working with a Shaman. I kept saying “I'm tired” – like ALL the time as many of us do. When he told me to stop saying that – that I was manifesting that energy to keep persisting. So I started saying, “I'm tired right now, but I feel the sun recharging me.” Or, “This morning I felt tired.” Basically identifying that my tiredness was temporary or in the past. After doing this for 3 weeks I literally went from constantly feeling exhausted to actually feeling lighter, more energized, and overall better.
So for kids, I want them to understand feelings are fluid – like a wave they peak, crash, and recede. They won't feel tired ALL day. I want this to be something they swap out throughout the day and can serve as a visual reminder for parents on teaching these little language hacks.
Number of the day + Letter of the day:
Most likely in the early homeschool days I'm going to theme our weeks as a letter and number that we'll deep dive on. For example, if the letter is G we'll wear green, eat grapes, count goldish, listen to guitar, etc.
Today's Activities:
Being self employed and working from home for over 5 years now, I think it's SO important to start teaching kids from a young age the importance of scheduling, prioritizing, and building internal motivation. So each day I plan to have us choose 3 activities that we'll do.
This is my magic number for creating a sustainable work from home schedule as an entrepreneur too – no matter what, I also do 3 things each day and I think this rule of thumb will crossover into homeschooling quite nicely too!
How it works:
Basically we'll have cards like reading, math, arts and crafts, exercise, mystery field trip, etc. Each night as a family, I'll choose one, dad will choose one, and our daughter will choose one. In the morning, we'll revisit it. This gives each person the chance to swap theirs out if they changed their mind. We want everyone to feel excited about the day afterall! This also ensures that the “curriculum” is well rounded still. Since the parents choose two of the daily activities.
DIY Morning Board Tutorial with Cricut:
You can make your own using the guide above or you can download the files I used to your Design Space Canvas using these links:
You'll open the file – make sure everything is turned on (the little eye) and send to printer.
Once your images are printed, you'll head back into your Design Space Canvas – and this is REALLY important – turn off ANY layer you do not want cut.
For example, on the letter banners, I JUST wanted the dark background layer of the banner cut, so I turned off the lighter banner and letter. For the numbers, use the full circles, not the spliced circles.
Once you have only the outer layers turned on that you want cut, go back to “make it.”
Double check your work here and make sure your templates showing align with that you've already printed and is on your mat and only showing what you want cut. Add your sheet of paper with the printed design to your LightGrip mat, set your Cricut to paper and then cut the project.
Take the mat out, use the weeding tool to remove the cut images.
How to laminate with Cricut using contact paper:
Take some contact paper and cut it so that it's smaller than the black grid “cut lines” the Cricut put around your printed image. If any of the contact paper covers the black lines, this won't work since that's how the Cricut senses your project and calibrates.
Add your first sheet of contact paper, sticky side up onto the LightGrip mat. It'll stick onto the mat where you've removed your cut shapes.
Add your cut shapes back onto where they originally were. Then add another sheet of contact paper, this time sticky side down, on top.
Essentially you'll have your piece of paper with cut outs, contact paper sticky side up, the cut out pieces, and then the top layer of contact paper, sticky side down, sealing your desired finish project into a contact paper sandwich of sorts.
Load the project back into your Cricut, adjusting the setting to “light cardstock” this time, and cut.
Use the weeding tool to lift the entire cut form off the mat.
Final step…
As far as your board – you can use any board you'd like!
I had an old whiteboard that's magnetic that I thought would be perfect. I added these sticky magnets to the beach of each cut out so it stuck on the board.
Since my daughter is on the younger side, she loves this aspect while still learning/understanding what the heck this morning board even is!
Whatever board you choose – I do recommend attaching a few hooks/bags to the bottom of your finished board for all the pieces.
And there you have it! A days of the week DIY morning board! I hope you loved this Cricut preschool homeschool activity! If you set up a daily homeschool schedule command center like this, I'd LOVE to see it! Tag me on Instagram @theconfusedmillennial.
PIN IT FOR LATER:
