Juggling schedules for my family of five is a constant source of stress. Every day I deal with calendars for three kids in three different schools, plus their extra-curricular activities and the constantly evolving work schedules of me and my husband. All the meal planning, grocery shopping, and general house upkeep seem never ending.
For years, my husband and I shared a Google Calendar. It’s helpful, but not enough. Which is why I was excited when my family received a Skylight Calendar to try out.
Two of my kids—now a teen and a tween, ages 15 and 12—are just starting to become better at managing their own schedules, and they’re old enough to engage with a connected, touchscreen calendar. Families with younger children may not get the same benefits from a device like this, which WIRED reviewer Nena Farrell learned when she tested the Skylight with her preschool-age kid. My kids are touchscreen natives, and my 12-year-old son took to it right away.
As soon as we got the Skylight, he unboxed and set up the 15-inch screen on a counter near the kitchen using the built-in stand. (It also comes in 10- and 27-inch sizes, and the two largest models can be mounted on the wall.) We all downloaded the Skylight app onto our phones and synced up to the main device.
The calendar can connect to existing calendar apps from Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Yahoo. I am a Google user, and I helped my son import my Google Calendar to give us a base of scheduled activities. He set up a color-coded calendar for each kid in the family and moved their activities (from my already imported Google Calendar) to their individual colors. He also added a color for the household chores, like taking out the garbage and recycling, which are often up for grabs depending on who’s home. I loved this idea. It gave those duties their own category, even if I’m the one in my family still doing most of the heavy lifting.
One thing that surprised me was how excited my kids were to see everyone’s schedule. I didn’t realize that since they’ve gotten older they want to know what family activities I’ve planned so they can work around them. Instead of asking me if they can hang out with a friend on Thursday, they can easily check all of our schedules to see if it makes sense. I was glad to unload some of that responsibility, and they were happy to take it on.
While giving them access to the master calendar gives me some freedom, my Google Calendar also has personal notes, which are now visible to everyone in our family. For example, they can see the note I made to remind me to shop for my son’s birthday gift. I may need to rethink my note-taking habits as I adjust to using the Skylight app so that I can retain some privacy.
One of the first things my 12-year-old said when he looked up Skylight’s tools was that we won’t forget our grocery list anymore, since there’s one in the app. For a long time, our shopping list had been a piece of paper stuck to the fridge, and relying on it often led to annoying mishaps, like me forgetting to buy bread and having to go back to the store, or bringing home way too many bananas. Now, we all have the Skylight app on our phones, and everyone can add items to the grocery list from anywhere. Anytime one of us (mostly me) is near a grocery store, we (I) can see the list and pick up whatever’s needed.
Wall Flower
Some of the Skylight’s features are behind a paywall; a Plus subscription ($79 a year, or $8 a month) unlocks things like the platform’s meal-planning tool and its AI-powered assistant named Sidekick. I found great utility in the Sidekick assistant. After 15 years of entering the kids’ multiple school and activity calendars and dates by hand, I love that Sidekick can import events from a photo of a piece of paper, or from a forwarded email, and add the activities directly to my calendar. Scanning a paper schedule doesn’t generate a perfectly accurate calendar event (neither does forwarding an email), but it gives me a starting point and cuts down on the effort it takes to enter everything manually.
With Sidekick, my family can also scan printed recipes with the phone’s camera and add them to a database, where they can then tap the recipe title to add the dish to our weekly calendar. When I’m in the kitchen, the recipe is then easy to access on the 15-inch screen or in the Skylight app.
