Teach Your Child Time Management

Although time management has been greatly associated with people in the work force, children can still benefit tremendously from this offset of organizational skills. Teaching your child the benefits of time management will provide your children with a comprehensive tool that will help them throughout their lifetime. In a time where after school activities overlap with personal, family and social time, unnecessary stress or tension can accommodate your child’s atmosphere if they do not have time management skills. By initiating time management skills with your children, you can eliminate these and other preventable conflicts.

In this busy world, children are not capable of balancing all the essential activities of school, home and social commitments. The more efficient we teach children to use their time the more productive in school they will become. As all the skills we teach our children through the growing years they will continue to use this skills throughout their lives. Therefore, as a side of time management we should also be teaching our children how to use our time wisely.

These concepts might be difficult for some children to grasp, persistence and understanding will go a long way in helping your child reach this goal.

Preschool
Start your preschooler out with a large calendar that she/he can reach; it should be hung in an office, dining room or in the kitchen area. Somewhere where you can both sit and talk about various concepts of time with the calendar close by. When you are explaining the concept of time management to young children, it’s also a great idea to have a clock and a stop watch around. “The clock tells us what time it is. When we think about the things we have to do we have to be aware of how long these things take.”

Now show your child the clock, “Eight o’clock is your bedtime, so if you want a book read to you in the evening you have to be ready for bed earlier and to find out how earlier we have to time ourselves reading a book. EWith the stop watch in hand and set to time you, read a book with your child and stop the watch once you are finished. Show your child the time on the stopwatch. “See there it took us four minutes to read that particular book, so you know you have to be ready for bed five minutes before your bed time to have a book read to you at night.”

This is just one of many ideas that will give you and your young children an advantage over learning time management. You can also do the same procedure with running errands, cleaning, taking a bath, going to a movie or out to dinner, or any other job or activity that is completed.

Main points to address:

• Keep a large calendar hung where your child can see it.
• Go over the calendar schedule with your child.
• Talk about the concept of time and how long various tasks take.

Grades K-3rd
Now that children have the basic concept of time and how timing yourself on various objects works, you can talk to them about the time of day and how many projects can fit into one work day, or in your child’s case, play day.

Purchase your child an academic student calendar, these calendars usually begin in the month of August (when school normally starts) and run until July the following year. This is a great way to get them involved in writing their schedule down and keeping their tasks organized.

If they have a school project, book report or major project in school this is the perfect opportunity to show your child how long something takes and using good time management. Have them write down when the project was assigned to them and when the project is due. Have them write down, between the time it was assigned and the time it is due, portions of the project to be completed. Therefore, if they have a book report due and they have two months to complete the project they should have half the book read in two weeks, the other half in three-four weeks, the outline the report the following week, the first draft the following, etc. Be sure to see them through this assignment with encouragement and praise for completed tasks.

Main points to address:

• Be sure they have a calendar for school.
• Go through the calendar with your children every week to be sure they are writing everything down.
• Have them include family activities and birthdays.

Grades 4th-6th
If you have a child that is involved in sports, extracurricular activities, groups and clubs, taking on too much can be easy to encounter and tough when everything comes to a boiling head. Talk to your children about how taking on too much could have an adverse affect on each one. It is appropriate for children to expand their knowledge and to be involved in various things they enjoy, but taking on too much only creates a negative effect.

You should also have a student academic calendar for children in this age group and complete the same types of tasks as provided above.

Main points to address:

• Explain to your child the concept of taking on too much.
• Go over your child’s calendar with them.

Resources
Resources that can help you in your venture include:

• Family Education – http://school.familyeducation.com
• Time Management Skills – http://www.timemanagementgoals.com/
• Free Time Management Library – http://www.managementhelp.org

Posted in Character.

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