We keep a Daily Data sheet for Josiah to give us detailed information about his day.  It requires just a check mark or brief comment every so often. It used to be much more complicated, calling for more time and effort.

When Josiah was much younger, we sent a notebook back and forth each day to jot down messages between school and home.  His teachers would highlight anything of great importance.  I would add comments about him from home.  It was helpful since Josiah is non verbal, however it gave a very limited view of his day.  To be honest, who has time to write a paragraph or two everyday when you are responsible for a classroom full of children anyway?

We progressed from there to a Daily Report.

With this format we could see a snapshot of Josiah’s day. This was during Josiah’s nocturnal period.  Except for a few hours, he was wide awake most every night so the most important piece for me was always whether he slept at school or not.

It didn’t include specifics like…What skills or IEP goals did he work on that day? How was his mood?  Was he cooperative?  Was he hyper or sleepy? When did he go to the bathroom and what happened each time he went? Did he let anyone know he needed to go to the bathroom or was he just taken on schedule? Did he eat all of his lunch or just some of it? The more detailed picture I could generate from school. the better equipped I felt at home to be able to follow through.  So, I created this checklist:Basically, I wanted to be a fly on the wall and since I couldn’t, this helped tremendously.

As Josiah grew and life became a bit more complicated, the data sheet was updated.  It was imperative to add his medication dosages and a section about challenging behaviors. Early last year the sheet looked like this:

And the most current version looks like this:Will this be the final version?  HA!  If you know me you know I LOVE to organize and I’m always reorganizing my organization.  As Josiah’s needs change, no doubt his daily data sheet will also.

I keep these in a Daily Data Binder, out on the kitchen counter to make it easy for any of us working with Josiah to add information.  Only one month at a time, the current month is kept in the binder.  The rest are housed in a much larger binder, by year.

The Daily Data Binder comes in handy for so many reasons.  We usually grab it on our way out the door for Dr. appointments.  As we all know, my memory isn’t the greatest these days.  It’s so helpful when answering questions to have the data at your fingertips.  Over time you start to notice patterns, also helpful when trying to put clues together.

If you don’t have a Daily Data sheet for your special needs child, I’d highly encourage you to start one today.  Customize it to your specific situation and keep it simple.  And then when you need to organize all your data, order turquoise binders, a 3 hole punch, binder tab dividers and maybe some page protectors to store all your information in one handy location.

This brings me such joy!