How Pictaplan ®  began

The Mother - Lois

As most mothers do, Lois wanted her home to be a secure and happy environment in which her children could discover the joys of learning and living life together. She wanted them to develop personal ownership of the activities and responsibilities of their lives.

As her children were young at the time, she thought that the best way to do this would be to create a schedule of their day in picture form. This would enable the children to anticipate the key events of their day and become more involved in the organizing of their routine.

Having searched the internet under key words such as 'picture cards - planner - children' etc. and finding nothing, she resolved to draw her own. Although these were of a very poor quality, the whole system was a BIG HIT with her children! It immediately made a huge difference to the quality of their home life and to the smooth running of their day. For her children, the first fun event of the morning was to run downstairs and look at the magnet board to see what was on for the day! It provided them with a lot of pleasure and enabled them to accept and transition through the planned activities of the day more easily.

Over the following weeks and months many of her parent friends commented that they wished they had a similar system for their families! She therefore began to wonder if she should be making such a useful resource available to other families and individuals.