Whether it’s arriving early to a meeting, or keeping track of bills, organization plays a part in every hour of every day. Children face different struggles from adults, but keeping organized as they learn to balance school and other activities is vital to academic success.
Get organized with these tips!
1. First, understand the struggles
Look at your child’s problems with organization so you can develop a plan for improving these skills. Is your child often losing things? Does your child lack the proactive skills to plan and schedule? You’ve always got to diagnose the problem before prescribing a solution – the same is true of your child’s organizational issues.
2. Encourage reading ahead
Reading is a time-consuming activity, but when there is an extra block of time available it’s best for your child to read ahead. This will alleviate any scheduling issues with other time constraints. This will also help learned material to stick, as they are seeing concepts for a second of third time when their teacher brings it up in class. Bonus: this will boost your child’s confidence and allow them to stand out as a prepared student.
3. Manage the paperwork
While more and more of today’s assignments are being completed online, there are still a lot of papers that will be passed to your child’s hands each day. Help them get organized by purchasing a binder with tabs and color coded sections, and show them how to use it effectively. Up the fun-factor and purchase stickers or glitter gel pens for labeling.
4. Pay attention to study space
Clear the space where your child studies to reduce distractions. The fewer the items the better! Also make sure there is excellent lighting to reduce the strain on their eyes.
5. Set parental controls
If your child is easily distracted with online browsing, consider setting parental controls to include only “school necessary” websites such as Wikipedia or a class site. You can set time limits on these controls to later open a browser setting for “non-study” times.
6. Go digital
Just like a vast amount of papers need to be organized, so do digital files. Online resources like Dropbox or Google Drive are great ways to help a student get and stay organized. Creating folders for each of their classes and developing a system for keeping materials organized can be a huge help as students take on more and more coursework. This will also make it a cinch to go back and look at old work while preparing for tests.
Developing organization skills early is an investment that will set your child up for success during school, but also in life. These tips will help your child not only perform better in school, but reduce stress through better study skills. As they incorporate these organization tips into habits, they will begin to develop even more methods. They may even teach you a thing or two!
