⭐️ Do you know what time it is?
⭐️ Can you start doing your homework now?
⭐️ When are you done?
⭐️ Hurry up!
Does this sound familiar?
This is all about time.
Is very common that we only started learning or teaching time management after the kids go to school. Some doesn’t even learn about time management until they are out in the working environment.
Time is important. The skill to manage your time is even more important. With the advancement of technology, there are way more things to learn and do compared to the past. We need to start teach our kids from young, how to manage their time so that they won’t get overwhelmed with all the activities and homework assigned to them.
Here are 7 simple strategies on how you can teach your young kids at home about time management:
1) Make a calendar together
Get your kid involved and make a calendar together! Is fun and at the same time, you are able to teach them about day, month, year and seasons too. Make it colourful and add pictures to it so that it entice your little one to feel interested to learn more.
2) Create a schedule
We, being an adult, requires the use of apps and calendars to keep our schedule in place and to keep track of when to do what. Same goes for the kids.
Create a nicely decorated schedule and add in as much visual as possible so that they understand easily on what to do. For example use of food for snack time, books for reading time and bed for bedtime. Set the routine so that they understand when to do and what to do when the time comes.
Having a schedule/routine, allows the kid to expect what is next. Thus, providing them with the security and comforting sense of order. So start to create that schedule. set the routine and stick to it!
3) Set priorities
It is essential to teach kids from young to learn about what “needs to be done” and what “has to be done”. Learning to priorities also teaches them how to self-monitor their work/tasks.
Prioritisation is another skill that is critical to learn so those important things are done first productively. It is also for them to learn what is important and what needs to be done first before others.
For example, the time to do their structured learning is placed before playtime.
4) Teach them to tell time
This may be slightly difficult for very young kids. You can start off with morning, afternoon and night time and slowly proceed to tell the time by hour followed by minutes.
Take one step at a time so that you won’t overwhelm them and causing the confusion. Make it fun so that they won’t free stressful. Create some fun clocks and colour the different time of the day with colours so that they can visually see it and learn to tell the time better.
5) Put everything in one place
What I mean by that is to organize your pieces of stuff so that they are easy to find. For example, I have all my craft materials on this trolley.
Whenever it is kids’ crafts time, they know where to go-to for the things they need and they know that they have to place it back to where it belongs. It helps to keep you sane when you indirectly train them to put things back.
6) Let them be free
As much as you want to teach them to manage their time and making them understand how important the time is to perform certain tasks, make sure you let them also understand that when tasks are completed there is something called “free time”.
Purpose of this free time is to allow them to see where the time goes and which other timing is open for unstructured activities.
7) Model it right
As a parent, we are their role model. On top of teaching and guiding them, we have to show them how it is done by doing it ourselves too. Kids learn faster with what they see. Imagine you are always in a rush, tossing things all over the place and later searching for it frantically. What do you think your kids will feel? Your kids may get confused and won’t learn anything but they do learn what you did.
To train a kid to understand time management, you need to set routines and keep repeating it. Slowly but surely, they will get used to it and become a habit. Is always good to help them break up bigger tasks to smaller ones and get them to perform each tasks step by step.
Time management skill starts young. Setting the foundation by practising good time management and structuring the day helps to improve their self-discipline as well. Come one and give these strategies a shot! Don’t forget to share this out with other parents who need it too!
Do you have tips/strategies to share on how you teach your kids on time management? Feel free to share in the comment below!