With the approach of Autumn and the changes it brings, I find myself mindful of considering everyone involved in those changes, especially our daughter, who is in a new school, and a new grade this year. For the first time, ever she is not coming straight home from school every day, but instead is involved in several extra circular activities of her liking, from Piano to Science, and Swim to Fashion, Girl Scouts and hang out time with friends, add homework into the mix, and she has a full calendar.
At this moment, I know some people are going on about how children should not have every moment of their lives scheduled, and should have time to just be kids, and I agree with that and she does. We make sure that she has free time every day to do what she would like to do at home, and make sure she gets time with friends as much as possible. However, in the real world adults do not work all day and come home and do nothing. Which is why, depending on the child it is good, for them to learn the basic ideas of time management, and doing extra circular activities allows this to be accomplished and offers her a chance to figure out how much is to much, and to look at ways to make changes so she isn't stressed out because she took to responsibility on. In this approach we allow her the chance to try new things, manage her time, with some help and encouragement, and help her understand better or different approaches, in a way that is not going to create issues, in this process she is also learning, the basic concepts, when we go to bed to late, it makes the next day difficult especially when it comes to doing our homework, and chores, because your tired, however, you still have the responsibility of getting it done.
Some weeks are busier than others, and some days are crazy, like the weeks she has Girl Scouts, but those are the weeks when we do our weekly math assignments that are on IXL in the morning for the amount of time required, and we work on it together. Reading is easy to do as leave piano and head towards Girl Scouts and we will review spelling words as well, since we have time. When we get home for the evening, everything will be done, math, spelling and reading homework, she will have a half hour to do what she wants, and because it's a half our drive to piano she gets a half our that way to do hat she wants as well.
Most of her days are not that crazy, but sometimes, like us, some days are exhausting require some savvy time management to get the task that need to completed done. I look at this as a way to help her learn how to solve the time issue, and to learn how to make what needs to be accomplished done, and what can be left for another day to leave it. There is something to be said for learning time management at an early age, it teaches you how to accomplish your daily task, and do it in a way that prevents you from being stressed. Students who learn time management at an early age, also have a tendency to do better in Middle and High School because they have learned how to fit it in and how to do the ground work for things in ways that their peers have not. Like everything it is a balancing act, of teaching them, how to do it, how to tell when and if it's to much and how to make it look easy.
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