Making the best use of the time requires proper planning, prioritizing, and scheduling of tasks. Generally, adults are aware of this skill, but for children, time management and organizing skills are often lightly touched upon in everyday life. However, it is one of the most important life skills that every successful student must learn so that they can manage their time efficiently.
In today’s competitive, fast-paced world, time management is equally important for children as it is for adults. So, it is important that children learn and practice time management as a skill that enhances their ability to manage and organize tasks to be completed in a timely manner. At the K.R. Mangalam School, one of the best CBSE schools in Gurgaon, we believe that it is ideally the combined responsibility of us, the parents and the teachers, to help children understand the significance of time management and to equip them with this crucial skillset so that they can lead their lives in a better organized way. So here we go with a few tips and strategies that we would like to request the parents to adopt and apply regularly for their children, which will certainly help the kids in learning to manage their time for the better.
Prioritize and Plan:
Time management is often about how you plan and execute tasks. First of all, it is important to teach the kids how to prioritize what is essential and what is not. It is not just about adding new activities to the child’s schedule but you should also know to drop less important tasks/activities so that they can focus more time on important ones. When you prioritize and plan, you bring potential activities in the forefront and avoid the hassle of overstraining yourself and your little ones.
Stay on Task:
Even though you keep planning and prioritizing things, it might always be tempting to put aside some tasks for the sake of convenience. But if you want your kids to learn time management, always stay on task. Even if they want to play a few more hours or you want to go out, make no excuses but stick to the schedule and move on doing the next task on time. This way, your kids will know the importance of time management and certainly learn to follow the schedule, no matter what.
Avoid Procrastination:
One of the most important things children have to learn in time management is to avoid procrastination. It is necessary to teach them how not planning ahead with the deadlines can restrict their productivity and lead to unnecessary delays. Also, they should be taught to do the difficult things first and their favorite tasks last as it will avoid the temptation of procrastinating things to a more ‘convenient’ time. Always teach kids to plan ahead of time so that they can avoid last-minute stress at doing things. Never allow your child to do their assignments the night before it’s due. Instead, teach them how to break up larger assignments into chunks and how they can allocate enough time for each task to get the work done in time. It is important to guide children through prioritizing and tweaking their daily/weekly school schedule until they learn to do it on their own.
Give Rewards:
Rewards are a great way to motivate kids to learn and do things in an enjoyable way. So, when children stick to their schedule and complete tasks on time, you can consider rewarding them with some little extra time for play or for any of their favorite activity. Also, praising them and telling them about their achievement in time management are positive reinforcements that have a lasting effect on the character development of children in future.
Do Not Overschedule Your Kids:
Even though time management makes things easier, one of the common mistakes that most parents tend to make is overloading kids with so many activities after school. This kind of overscheduling the kids with activities can end up disrupting their ability to learn and even become counter-productive in the long-run. So try to avoid overscheduling and let your child deal with time management without getting overstressed or cluttered.
Practice is the Ultimate Solution to Attaining Perfection:
Mastering time management isn’t an easy task; it takes time for kids to learn how to plan, organize, schedule, and manage time. It is crucial that you stay patient with the kids and let them practice time management slowly and steadily until they get the full grasp of it. Let the child practice how to schedule and prioritize activities regularly, so that they will gradually learn organizing tasks and making choices depending on their abilities all on their own. In the long-run, they will surely understand the importance of managing time for boosting efficiency.
We, at the K.R. Mangalam School, very well understand what significance does being adept at the skill of time management holds for any individual, be it a child or an adult, and hence, we have been consistently teaching our students the art of prioritizing their activities, enabling them to learn time management as an essential life skill. Starting from daily priorities to weekly/monthly priorities, students at KRMS are trained to master their time management skills and set up for success in future. We believe it is important that children are taught the significance of time management at a younger age, so that they learn to prioritize things, plan well, and put aside procrastination, and can thus look forward to leading a disciplined life ahead.
Leave a Reply