It's Time To Manage Time

Less time. More work. Sounds like a training course for adulthood, right? 

The after school schedule is in full swing now. Clubs and sports are back in session and our after school hours are slimming down. You might be finding yourself in a tricky after school storm of interesting activities and increased need for additional time spent on make up work and test retakes. This web creates a real need to plan and manage our limited time. However, time management is a tough one for our students. Amiright?

Managing The Family Calendar

• Place your family calendar within public view. A place where you can't help but see it every day. The fridge or food cabinet are good spots.

• Crossing off days as they go by, is a super simple, but super effective strategy with family calendars.

• Try to use colors and symbols more than words and numbers. The family calendar could indicate the main events such as no school days or game days. You can put the event details on the weekly schedule.

• Visually separate the weekdays from the weekend days.

• Use Frixion erasable highlighters. They are great because of the pale color and ability to erase.

Managing The Weekly Schedule

• Use a weekly schedule. White boards are great for this.

• Place near the family calendar.

• Draw a dark line to separate weekdays from weekends.

• This is where we display appointment/camp/practice details, and maybe a few helpful chores.

Mapping Time To Manage Time

"Time mapping" is essentially time blocking. I call it time mapping to think of this process in terms of mapping your course before following your own plan.

• Use a paper week view schedule with time intervals. I really like this one, or you could print my Weekly Time Map.

• Talk through the week, once a week. Consider collaboratively planning the week with your student. You could do this during your weekly grade report meeting.

• Fill in time slots for appointments, including drive time, and getting ready time. These are the little episodes of time that our kids forget to think about. Over estimate the time that it will take (for example, if it takes 10 minute to get ready, block out 30 minutes on the schedule).

• Fill in health and self care priorities such as meals and sleep.

• Discuss the remaining white spaces with your student. Let them weigh in on a plan for those time periods.

• Allow for free time. Not every single moment has to be scheduled.

We can't change our struggling student's ability to sense time, but we CAN help them SEE it. When our brains struggle to do something internally, we simply find a way to do it externally.

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