How does your child stay organised with multiple music lessons?

[Hurricaneharriet]

Hiya, I'm hoping that this is the right board for this question. DD (12) has 1:1 lessons in several instruments, all taking place during the school day but at different times each week. They can be during lessons, PE or at break time.

She's expected to organise herself to get to each lesson at the right time but she struggles a bit with organisation. Phones are not allowed in school. She forgets to regularly check her planner.

We need a watch that allows multiple alarms to be set up to a week in advance. Ideally one that can be set from the watch itself so she can do it independently. If alarms could be labelled that would be good but not essential as she only rarely has two music lessons per day.

Can anyone recommend a watch that does this?

how many a week are we talking here?!

Could you possibly move her to a music school? It sounds as though she is in the wrong school if the lessons are actually getting in the way for her learning like that.

For Y7 we had a weekly tear off planner, which she got from The Works. A column for each day, and she wrote down which instrument at what time, plus PE Kit etc, for the week every Sunday (I encouraged and reminded).

She stuck that on the front door, and checked it before she left, so she had the right instrument and music. At school, she carried her instrument around until she’d had her music lesson, to make it harder to forget.

Several instruments? How many is several? How does she fit in practising?

My fitbit vibrates with alarms. I set them on the watch but I do also have the app on my phone for other functionality. It's quite easy to set them and you can choose if you want them weekly or individual days.

Look for a daytime toileting reminder watch.

4 lessons per week (3 music and 1 drama) but sometimes there are extra rehearsals for things slotted in during the school day.

She's not at the sort of level to go to a music school. She just likes doing a lot of music and the school encourages it too. So far a lot of her lessons have been scheduled for break/games/assembly/form time so I don't think she's missing too much. Am keeping an eye on it though.

This sounds good. I think something stuck on the front door would be a good start as hard to miss when she's leaving the house! I like the idea of carrying the instrument until the lesson though it won't work for singing or piano! She could carry round the music but I know she'd put it down and lose it!

My son has music lessons at school at different times so easy to miss. He has a watch with an alarm that can be silenced but vibrate so he just sets that to 5 mins before his lesson in the morning before he leaves.

This is why we moved to these being done outside of school..just less stress and they don't miss stuff and get proper breaks

Sorry I realise thats not helpful!

Ah this sounds like it's what we need. So she could set eg 1:10 Monday, 11:05 Tuesday etc all in advance?
Is it a particular model of Fitbit? Or do they all do this? (Sorry I'm hopeless with tech)
How often do you have to charge it?

NB we helped him at first. We (and now he) set it over breakfast. This is the one he has as he's not allowed a smartwatch at school. It's not very girly though!

Casio Men's Digital Sport Watch amzn.eu/d/7K7Yiyj

I have seen these but wasn't sure if they could only be set for eg every 2 hours or if you could program them for specific times for future days. Is there one you can recommend that does this?

I have been wondering about this and might change things if it all gets a bit much. Trouble is, outside of school time seems busy too!

These watches can have up to 8 alarms a day.

https://shop.eric.org.uk/collections/vibrating-alarm-watch

They're for kids who need to be reminded to go to the toilet, but would work for music lessons too.

That looks good. I'd rather not leave it to the morning though if I can possibly avoid it as she's always up late and it would rely on me reminding her to set it when I'm rushing out to work. Getting it done in advance would suit us then it's one thing off my list!

Thank you. I'll have a proper look at this later. I can see that you can set multiple alarms in a day which is good but I can't tell whether you can do it days in advance (which is what I'd really like)

You can set up to around 10 different alarms and choose which day of the week (or they can be daily). It's a fitbit versa 4. Charge approx weekly. I used my Tesco rewards to buy it!

I bought this watch for DS after he forgot a music lesson - he can set multiple vibrating alarms and the battery lasts all week.

amzn.eu/d/b3Tilc8

This looks good. Do you know if you can set alarms just for the same day or for future days?

Thanks fruitpastille. That definitely does everything we need it to. It's a shame it's expensive. Knowing DD she'd take it off for sport and lose it in school. I wonder if any of the cheaper Fitbit models can do the same thing...

You can set this one with as many or as few alarms as you wish:

https://amzn.eu/d/1YdMxQ4

Thanks for all the suggestions! I definitely picked the right board to ask the question. Lots of options to look at 😀

I had a similar struggle with DS who could not remember when his trumpet lesson was. They rotated them round the timetable so they didn't miss too much of any one lesson but it meant he couldn't get into a routine. I wrote on his hand before he went out of the door in the morning "End of first break", "middle of maths". Eventually I just wrote a letter T and that was enough. They also weren't allowed phones in school. Vibrating watch sounds like a brilliant idea.