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Although the year has just begun and children are still adjusting their mood back to school, they are also receiving details on their weighted assessments for the term or even the year. Seeing how some of my students have back-to-back enrichment classes (ballet, piano, taekwondo…) on top of their usual school and CCA time amazes me. This reminds me of one of the essential executive functioning skills – time management.
As adults, we understand the importance of being able to time manage, such as spending quality time with our family and friends, being productive at work and essentially, balancing work and life altogether. If we are not able to excel in one area, guilt will slowly creep into us. Moreover, when procrastination hits in, our ability to focus and complete tasks become challenging. Thus, time management is a skillset that needs to be developed when we are young so that it becomes an easily accomplishable task instead of a struggle.
How can we help children build their ability to manage time?
Grasping the idea of time: At FUN Commune, we pre-empt children by sharing in advance how much time they have before the next activity. For example, we have a scheduled Quiet Time after lunch to let them regulate themselves after a morning of school. Instead of telling them at 3pm and it's time for schoolwork, we would give them a heads-up 10mins before the end of Quiet Time to prepare them on the activity change. This gives them an idea of how 10-minute feels like, and to also allow children to adjust mentally.
Having tools such as a digital timer or a sand timer. Our children love sand timers because of its size and the ability for them to observe ‘how much time is left’. We would bring out different sand timers for activities that require different amount of time. For example, we are in the midst of preparing children for their examinations. They will then be tasked to complete the given set of questions in 15 minutes, with the timer on their table for them to gauge the amount of time that they still have.
Due to their developmental milestones, children need to follow routines. Under our After School Care Services, we put up a time schedule on the wall so that children can refer to it visually to know what their tasks are and to complete them according to deadlines. This ability is built overtime and can assist children to manage their time better and eventually, support them in their later tasks such as projects!
According to studies, good time management has shown success in academic, work, and social skills, as well as wellbeing. This is one of the skillsets that we work on at FUN Commune through our in-house curated programme, ITOTA, and in our After School Care Services. Give us a call if you would like to support your child’s skills to enhance their learning progress in school!
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