I recently was asked ‘what’s a great way to get kids into planning?’. I love this question because I had a chance to sit down and think about how I got started as a kid. I was about 8 years old and purchased a Chandlers 
planner (sadly they no longer make planners). This was a fantastic planner that came out every new school season and the most difficult choice for me was color selection and my parents knowing my stationary addiction allowed me to always get two! With that said, it brings me to the point that support and sharing with your kids is so incredibly important. Now, my mom was never a scrapbooker and never used a planner or lists or anything. My Dad was more organized and loves pen to paper. He always carried a daily agenda and loved using yellow legal pads for list making. I was never restricted if I wanted to look at his lists or his daily agenda. I do remember that he carried that with him ALL the time. It always would sit on the dash of his car and on his desk. I remember he always referenced it for phone numbers and notes and anything else that ‘grown-ups’ need access to. So I highly highly encourage showing your kids your planners and sharing examples of things to put inside of your planner.
My daughter is 3 and she shows some interest in notebooks and journals but I don’t push it. I think that kids need to naturally stumble upon things and showing them by example I personally feel is the best way to get little ones interested.
The next best thing I can recommend is a space for kids to have all their own. Whether that’s a little table or a space in the kitchen, bedroom, family room, kids need to have their own place. For myself growing up my parents always had a desk for us. 
To this day I have always always had a desk! Each apartment that I have lived in and each house that I have shared with my husband I have a desk space. It is something that is essential to me. I have to have somewhere where I can sit down and write, draw and color. I have done this for as long as I could remember. I have a hard time writing while lying in bed or sitting on the couch. It happens but usually I like having my designated space, lighting a candle and becoming creative or planning my next day. 
I have a small desk that I purchased for my daughter and put it in the same room as my desk. Whenever I sit at my desk she will wonder on over to her creative space even though most of the time she wants to sit at my desk, it’s an option for her. The desk I purchased was $20 at Ikea and I placed some paints, scissors, markers, pencils and crayons. I tend to stock up on these items whenever it’s back to school shopping. All extra supplies I keep in a cabinet high up and replenish when needed.
I will often times sit with my daughter and show her the journals I have put together. She loves to look at the pictures and point out different family members. I love to remind her of the things we have done. I have not shared too much of my planners because I think it’s something that might come a little later. I focus on more of the creative process with her right now. Letting her play with finger paints and use all kinds of bright colors. Gluing down scraps of paper and cutting up magazines, it’s all lots of fun and I use inexpensive composition notebooks and write down dates so that it’s something my daughter can look back on.
When I was first using planners as a kid one of my favorite things to use inside were the pens! I loved using the bic pens with all the different colors. I loved using stickers and markers to decorate the pages and make them my own. I know that some of my girlfriends in school use to clip out magazine articles and glue them into their planner. We use to write notes to each other in our planner as well. Every Sunday night before school would start I had a dedicated pen color for each subject and I would for example, write Math and underline it. I wrote out all of my tests and quizzes to make sure I knew when I needed to study and I was never surprised and never missed assignments. I use to love sitting at my desk and decorating my weeks. I clearly remember drawing christmas lights and using them as borders in my layouts. I remember purchasing lisa frank stickers and holiday stickers and posting them throughout my pages.
Getting your kids excited about their planners and having them pick out what THEY want. Do they want to color and fill it with stickers? Let them! It’s their own planner let them play and explore and see what works for them. I have my daughters calendar on our kitchen fridge with dates highlighted and share with my daughter important dates. When she comes home from preschool we go through her folder and look through everything she has done and we talk about her assignments and things that are coming up. I am not someone who is a type A personality but I do think it’s important to have some kind of plan. Having some kind of skeleton for what you want out of life is the way that I like to look at it. Things happen and life has it’s bumps but having an idea of what you want out of your day, for myself has helped me get things done and have a successful life.
These are some of my tips to help kids get excited about planning and getting organized. Share your calendar with your kids show them fun activities they can plan out and that way they have things to look forward to! Show them that writing down assignments and tests and quizzes helps them to be prepared ahead of time and nothing feels better than to get a good grade on an assignment! The reward of doing well in school will help them see how great it is to have a planner. Making it fun and something that is their own is usually a good recipe! Don’t push anything on kids just show them the options and allow them to grow into it! Do your kids use planners? Any tips that you recommend?
Journals have been my best friend since I was about 8 years old. I think I just learned early on in life that if I wrote down everything that I was thinking and going through it made it easier. I felt so much better when I was able to share my deepest feelings and get them out of my head and heart. Why or how this started I couldn’t tell you but I just remember finding notebooks at any store that had carried them and loving to fill them up with Lisa Frank stickers and filling the pages with different colored pen inks.
The inserts are unique in that there are little doodles throughout as well as fun facts. There are many holidays that are subtly placed throughout which I love seeing. 
So for those of you who love to have space to doodle and really free form plan then these are ideal. On the right hand side you have boxes to work with. In these spaces I broke them
Many people feel like they will mess it up or don’t feel comfortable but I think that with all the gorgeous little doodles it really helps to overcome that hump. If you like to pretty plan but don’t always have he time the doodles help to enhance the page and always bring a smile to my face. The only draw back I see for these inserts is that there is not a monthly view. Now to be fair there is a wonderful pull out calendar of the entire year that really helps you 
organize your life but for some reason I still really like to see my month at a glance. This isn’t the end of the world for me because I do have another set of inserts in my planner so I do have a month overview . In regards to paper quality I am really very impressed. I am someone who will be very turned off with inserts if the quality of the paper is not good. I like to use all kinds of different pens and I don’t want to be bothered with bleed through or heavy shadowing. When I did the pen test I was very happy that I only had an issue with the sharpie. It’s not surprising because the sharpie will bleed through most anything but my fountain pen the 
You can seen that only after one coat it looks like maybe this project wasn’t such a good idea but I promise if you stick with it you will most likely be fine. I went from the darker purple color to a lighter aqua color so the amount of coats of paint required are more, about 4-5 to be exact. I initially thought that I could save the stitching and use a small brush to go around the stitching. It looked ok but then in different lighting I could see the purple trying to peek out from behind the threading so I needed to go back and paint over the stitching which is fine because I LOVE how it all turned out. The paint does not have an overwhelmingly strong smell and I wouldn’t say that the smell of the Malden is gone. It still has the softness and I am still able to bend and move the Malden so the floppiness is not gone from the planner. I took the plunge because I was hoping for something amazing and I feel I got what I wanted. Something in the future that I look forward to is trying to paint things onto the planner, add spots or patterns and mix colors to make planners much for unique to me!! It’s a fairly exciting journey to take to achieve something that is truly yours!! 
Just to prove to you that the stitching idea didn’t turn out quite the way I wanted to turn out here is an unclose shot. I did my best to paint around but you can still see how it is peeking through with the purple color. I believe from photos that I have seen online the stitching is white but again this is a DIY project and I must say I am very grateful to have found the paint and the idea to be able to create this planner transformation. In the picture below you can see the original color and that it is a beautiful egg plant purple. I loved it initially but then put it aside after last fall and started to lose some of my love for it. So when I started changing it I could feel in my heart that I would be in love with the new color!! The inside when painting is really no different than painting the outside. The only hiccup I found was around the zipper. The zipper is a material and so the paint gets really absorbed into it. I needed almost 8 or 9 good heavy swipes of paint in order to cover up the color. It works out fine just keep adding paint onto it. I also recommend letting every layer dry fully before adding more paint. I say this for both the zipper portion and the leather cover. I found that if you do not wait between layers the paint will just keep swirling and you end up with a lot of paint on your brush and then unable to add more color to the leather. Have no fear the acrylic paint dries almost instantly so luckily this does not take a very long time. I like watching a really long youtube video or putting on some Netflix and it helps pass the time. 
Terri is the owner and she is really great to work with. I had a little hiccup with my shipping but she fixed the issue and I had my TN very quickly!! I can’t even express how happy I am with this little notebook. I have just been carrying it around and touching it and smelling it all day long! Love this little guy. It’s perfect to bring with you in your purse and carry around to jot down thoughts and ideas!
I first found the company back last February and I just had to place an order! I since then have been following Rowena (the owner) and has constantly been amazed and inspired. She is a wonderful human being with a huge heart. She does mission work and shares her work on instagram and has been doing periscopes to share little helpful tips on how to add color to your TNs. Once again the importance of following people on social media behind these notebooks. It helps you to have an appreciation and to better understand where the notebooks origin is from. I personally love that the notebook comes with a story and then develops and longer tale in your hands! What makes the Sojourner so unique is that it comes in a B6 slim size! Something I had never seen anywhere else on the market! 
