Student Time Management: How to Teach Children to Plan Things
The day seems endless to kids, and they end up finishing math at midnight. This is not entirely their responsibility: to teach schoolchildren to plan their affairs is the task of parents. Here is a simple system that will help you create a harmonious schedule together.
From the book Time Management for Children. How to have time to study and relax” by Marianna Lukashenko, publishing house “Alpina Publisher”
Learning to share things
The main contribution to the employment of the child is made, of course, by the school. We as well-meaning parents are also trying to keep our child busy. At the same time, we are guided by two motives: when a child is small, it is important for us to develop him, and when older - “to keep busy, so that he does not hang out just like that and does not engage in nonsense.” And it is right.
To do this, we bring into the life of the child numerous circles and sections, the beginning of classes in which is quite concrete and not shifted, that is, strictly in time. Such cases are called “hard”. Examples of hard cases: school lessons, class hours, circles and sections, the beginning of a movie session, etc.
But besides this, the child has a lot of things that do not have to be done at strictly defined hours, the main thing is just to have time to do it. Things that need to be done, but at what time are not initially set, are called flexible.
Examples of flexible activities: doing homework, our errands, reading, playing games, walking, etc.
Since this division of affairs is important for their proper planning, practice with your child to distinguish between them. To do this, play the following game.
Game “Rigid or flexible?”
If your child is in elementary or elementary school, ask them to cut out a blue square and a green circle from colored paper. After that, agree that you pronounce on one case. If it is hard, the child should raise his hand with a blue square, if flexible, then with a green circle.
Then ask your child to formulate and write down some hard and soft things. Now let him pronounce them, and you guess! If the child is older, you can not play this game, but simply do the exercise: read the cases presented in the table and paint the box opposite the hard case in blue, and opposite the flexible case in green.
It seems to children (and sometimes adults) that if certain boundaries for the performance of a task are indicated, then this makes it possible to classify it as hard. Following this logic, if it is known that mom comes home from work at 19:00, and before that time you need to deal with English, then you should consider the matter tough. But this is an erroneous opinion, since we can start dealing with English at 15:00, and at 15:30, and at 16:00.
So this case is flexible, another thing is that it is mandatory and urgent enough, therefore, it cannot be delayed. The same is true for the case “Learn Geography” - it is also mandatory, and it also has a lower execution limit - “today”.
And the case “After school, go to the zoo”, on the contrary, has an upper limit - that is, starting from the moment you finish classes, you can go to the zoo, while you can go right away, or you can pre-lunch, talk with the guys or play. So this case is also flexible.
How to plan a day
The day seems incredibly long to our children: they, of course, will have time for everything - they will do their homework, take a walk, play computer games. But at the same time, their time is replete with tough deeds. In the lower grades and the main school, these are lessons and circles; in the older grades, preparatory courses and tutors are added. And in fact, there is very little time left for the implementation of flexible cases, and this time should be organized in such a way as to have time to do everything necessary.
In addition, spontaneous cases arise - assignments from adults, new unplanned homework. How to combine all these things? How to get a complete picture of your actions for today on one page of a diary or one notebook sheet?
So, the order of planning.
- We take a diary or just a clean notebook in a box and divide it in half vertically. If this is a blank notebook, then we apply a temporary grid on the left. If you have a diary according to the method of Gleb Arkhangelsky, then everything is already divided there as needed.
- On the left side, we write down hard cases, tying them to a specific time. In case of any changes in the schedule, we immediately fix them in a hard plan!
- We make a list of flexible cases, starting with the most important ones, and write it down on the right side without reference to any time. It is very convenient to use stickers. On each sticker, you need to write down one thing, and then line up the stickers, focusing on the importance of the cases. In more detail, the technology for determining important cases will be discussed later. You can do it differently: immediately write out all the flexible cases on the right side, and then underline the most significant of them with a red pencil and number them in descending order of importance. We use the right formulations that are result-oriented.
- This is followed by a very interesting moment - the day initially seems “rubber” to us, and when it comes down to it, time tends to disappear with lightning speed. In order for our plan to be realistic, in order for us to have time to fulfill everything planned, it is necessary to be aware of how long it will take us to complete this or that task. To do this, next to the most important things, we write down the approximate time for their completion. This is called “budgeting” time.
- At the very beginning of teaching your child this planning technology, determine the time budget for each task. […]
- Let’s see what we can really do today. […] Such budgeting of tasks will clearly show the realism of planning and dispel the illusion that there is enough time for everything, and therefore you can first chat with a friend and discuss a magazine, then take up a computer game, and only then start studying. This is “information for reflection” - what is superfluous in the plan, what actually had to be done yesterday, what can be postponed until tomorrow, and what not to do at all.
- Now let’s allocate time in our plan to the most important budgeted tasks. After that, we have a little more time for the rest of the tasks, and the day is over. It is considered correct if the left part of the plan is only 60-70% loaded (hard tasks + the most important, priority ones). We then have more leeway to carry out our plan and can successfully respond to changes as new cases arise. But in this case, this principle is difficult to adhere to, because in addition to school classes, there are also music classes, and no one has canceled homework at school. In the following chapters, we will look at what we can do to ensure that homework assignments do not snowball, but are smoothly completed as planned.
- As we have already agreed, as we complete the tasks, we carefully cross them out, and transfer the outstanding tasks to the next day, if this is still relevant. For example, we had the task “Go to the store”. Grandmother waited, waited, and went herself. We try to make sure that there are no unfulfilled, and even more incomplete tasks in the plan at all.
To summarize the above
- We allocate ten minutes in the evening to plan tomorrow. Upon returning from school, we make the necessary adjustments to it and get down to business.
- When enrolling a child in courses, circles, sections, planning a visit to the dentist or attending a concert, we do not put hard things right next to each other, we leave free time between them. We take into account the time for rest, food, the road, “re-mortgage” for unforeseen circumstances - traffic jams, a bus that did not arrive on time, sudden business at school. Is there time left? Great, we communicate with each other, discuss today’s affairs, breathe the air. We do blitz exercises, learn a couple of new foreign words, read or listen to an audiobook.
- We draw up a realistic plan - such that it is necessary to complete it completely, so that there are no unfinished business, in order to feel like a winner! In order to work out the technology of rigid-flexible planning, complete the day planning task with your child.