Children's Growth Chart

How do you keep track of your growing children? Do you measure their height with a little pencil mark on the back of a door, on a wall or inside frame of a doorway? Or, did you purchase one of those cute paper/cardboard growth charts when they were just a toddler?

Sadly, there is a disadvantage to any one of these methods. Should you ever have to paint the door or wall, your pencil marks could be gone forever and you will lose your "record" of growth for your children. Or even worse, if you ever have to move, you can't take the door or door frame with you. If you happen to have the cute decorative growth charts, they can either fade and wear with age, get ripped over time or just go out of style as your child ages. They aren't so cute anymore when your child is 12 or 14 years old. Or, if you just happen to keep track of their height in a book or journal, they can't be seen as readily without digging out the books and finding the right pages.

Here is a quick, easy and fun way to keep track of your children's height over the years and it will last forever. As well, should you ever change your residence, you can just take it with you.

This is what I learned to do..... the hard way. I use to measure my kids on the back of my kitchen door, but of course, the door eventually needed to be painted (thankfully, I did also have a record of their height in their school record books so all was not completely lost). However, when my granddaughter came along, I finally came up with this wonderful and fun idea. My husband is always saving bits and pieces of scrap wood. There just happened to be a piece that was perfect for this particular need. It's a long strip of wood, about 6' in length and 3" wide (a piece of door trim or flat baseboard would work equally as well). I painted it white, because it's easier to see the pencil marks on a white background. I then found a wall that was easy to access but a bit out of sight as well. I tacked it to the wall with small finishing nails and measuring up from the floor, I marked out inches and feet up to 6' on the outer edge of the board. Over time, with the help of my granddaughter, we decorated it with some fun stickers to brighten it up.

*note: don't put your growth chart in a room where there is carpet. The carpet will distort the actual true measurements.

The very first mark to be put on my new growth chart was my granddaughter's. I penciled a mark for her birth height and each subsequent birthday I'd add her new height. It's always been fun to see just where her growing spurts were, how much she grew from year to year, and which years she grew the most.

Not to make her feel alone on the chart, we also marked out the height of everyone in the family. This way too, it's interesting to see how long it will take her to reach or surpass the adult's marks. She has already, at 13 years of age, surpassed mine by almost an inch.

And now I have my 2 year old grandson to add to the family chart. My granddaughter gets her height marked with a red pencil and my grandson a blue. This way we can also see the differences in their heights and compare them at a glance. Of course, if you have more children (and/or grandchildren), designate a separate color for each child.

It's now part of our family ritual, that whenever a birthday is nearing, it's time to head straight to the growth chart to be measured. Even my 2 year old grandson has already caught on.