Practical ways to teach time management skills
Whether it’s helping your child to feel more control of their day, showing them responsible behaviours or helping them to focus on completing tasks, teaching children that time is precious and how to prioritize tasks nurtures a valuable life-long skill set. Age and ability appropriate modifications can be made to these suggestions to help little ones grasp some simple time management concepts.
Personalize schedules with easy to see colour coded pictures or icons. Showing blocks of time will help kids visualize when things will happen and how long activities should take.
Start slowly with one, or two, time blocks such as morning or afternoon and progress from there.
Encourage independent activities and realistic goals with pre-activity discussions and to-do-lists with drawings/stickers to create visual cues.
Demonstrate results so children can see how some time-related actions lead to positive or negative outcomes depending on how time is used. Reinforce the positive of course.
Teach focus to help kids understand that distractions of all kinds can lead to wasted time and lost opportunities. Getting ready quickly means more time at the park.
Empower kids to plan ahead and make intentional decisions for how they spend their time. Finish homework so you can ….
Preparing things for the task beforehand is a good organizational skill that you can help them with.
Break each day into manageable chunks with clear goals for each time slot. Be sure to build in some rest time and free time for play.
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