As your children move from kindergarten through the
middle school grades, they'll learn many things about many subjects. One
important life skill—which is sometimes overlooked in school and
sometimes covered quite well—is learning how to manage one's time. As
with all subjects, time management is easy for some people and not so
easy for others. You can help your student learn to manage her own
schedule by giving her the basic understanding and tools she needs to
succeed.
Things You'll Need
Teaching Scheduling Skills
Early in your child's
school years, he will learn to read a calendar and tell time. Probably
right about that time, too, he'll start to get homework assignments on a
regular basis. No doubt, he'll also be continuing with some enrichment
activities outside of school. Plus, he'll probably be picking up a few
more chores around the house. This would be an ideal time for you to
teach your child some scheduling basics.
Seeing Where the Time Goes
Even though your child
can tell time and has a sense of how long minutes and hours are, she may
not have a good sense about how much activity will fit into a day. So,
she'll think she can play video games until dinner and still have time
to practice piano, do her homework, and bake cookies with you—and still
get to bed on time. Then when she runs out of time, tempers—yours and
hers—flare.
You can help your child
understand what went wrong—and how to prevent such situations in the
future—by showing her how to construct a manipulative—a
physical representation of time with interchangeable, movable pieces
that represent specific activities and the blocks of time they occupy.
Using the manipulative will help your child learn where her time goes.
The example in Figure 1 shows how the finished pieces will look.
To create this sort of manipulative, follow these steps:
1. | Start
by helping your child make a list of everything she needs to do. You'll want to make this list
more expansive, though, including everything your child needs to do,
including traveling to and from school and all of her activities.
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2. | Also
have your child include on the list everything she'd like to
do—activities such as watching TV, playing video games, and playing with
her friends.
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3. | Indicate on the list which days of the week each item needs (or is wanted) to be done.
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4. | Mark
down how long each item takes if it's something your child needs to do
or how much time your child would like to spend doing it if it's
something she wants to do. Round each time to the nearest 15 minutes
(quarter hour).
note
When helping your
child list how long she will participate in activities to be included on
the manipulative schedule, you should consider negotiating some
minimums and maximums. For example, you may feel that she should spend a
minimum of two hours a week socializing with her friends and a maximum
of five hours a week playing video games. |
5. | Mark
each item as Mandatory (such as going to school), Flexible (such as
completing homework), or Optional (such as playing video games).
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6. | Decide
how many hours of sleep your child should get each night, so you can
figure out how many hours a day you want her to count on being awake to
do things. You shouldn't let anyone in the family schedule so much that
getting it done will cut into their sleep.
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7. | For
each day, make a strip of paper at least an inch wide and long enough
to have an inch of length for every waking hour. In other words, if your
child should get 10 hours of sleep a night, then each day's strip would
be 14 inches long. (See Figure 9.1 for an illustration.) You can lay out the entire week on one large sheet of paper with seven columns.
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8. | Write the hours of the day at one-inch intervals down the side of the page.
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9. | Represent
each to do item on a rectangle of paper that's as wide as the columns
and a quarter inch long for each 15 minutes of time it will take. If
your child needs to do something five days a week, have her make five
separate pieces for that item.
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10. | Have your child place the pieces into the columns at the times they need to be done.
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If the pieces take up more
space than the column, then there isn't enough time in the day for
everything she wants to do. If this is the case, take a close look at
your child's schedule with her. If she's truly overworked, you may want
to consider taking away some of her chore duties. If she's not making
good choices about how to spend her time, you can help her realize that
she'll have to cut out some of her leisure selections. Together, the two
of you can also evaluate her extracurricular activities to determine
whether any of them should be left off the schedule for now.
tip
Even
some adults are kinesthetic learners—they learn through touching and
moving—and this technique can help them understand their scheduling
dilemmas better, too. |
If the pieces easily
fit within each day, but your child is still having trouble getting
everything done, then you'll need to look at motivators to keep her from
wasting time. Whatever the case may be, literally seeing how activities
fill up time will help your child master the basics of scheduling.
Tackling Long-Term Projects
Another area where you
can help your school-age child develop good time management is with
long-term projects. Even if you are yourself a procrastinator, you'll
know in your head that if you can help your student learn to complete
these assignments in reasonably sized increments over time, then you'll
all be better off than if he waits and has to race to cram them into the
last hours before they're due. Show him how to break down the project
into manageable steps:
1. | Divide
the project into logical parts that can each be completed in about a
week and set weekly due dates for each part. (Example: Week 1—pick a
topic; week 2—make an outline; week 3—do research; week 4—write a rough
draft; week 5—write the final draft; week 6—make the report cover.) Some
teachers break down the project for their students and require them to
turn in each step for credit. If your student's teacher has done this,
then all you need to do is make sure that you help your student keep
track of the due dates.
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2. | Set
a plan for each part and enter the required tasks into your planner.
(Example: Make sure in week 3 that you schedule a trip to the library to
get research materials.) As an aid to your planning, keep asking your
student “What else do you need to complete this task?” until the answer
is “Nothing.”
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3. | Help your student to stay on schedule by monitoring his progress every day.
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Things You'll Need
A chore chart your student likes to use
A user-friendly individual planner for your student
A portable organizer for school papers
