Teaching time management to kids is a challenge, especially when you toss in school schedules and responsibilities. Fortunately, my friend Kirby from Under Thy Roof has great suggestions for helping your kids manage their time. Welcome to this week’s installment of Screen-free Summer Life Skills Bingo!

It’s almost back to school time! One of the big hurtles of back to school is getting kids back to a schedule!

I will confess that I LOVE planning and organization and that I’m a bit of a mutant that way. Most kids don’t come programmed like that – my own included. Here’s how we go about getting off on the right foot in those first weeks of school.

Repeat, repeat, repeat

Everything we are about to do involves repeating to the kids (and to yourself) what you need to be doing until it becomes a habit. Remember that YOU are learning this routine too!

Decide on Your Rough Draft Routines

Pick your order for morning and getting ready for bed. Pick a start time and an end time.
Nothing else, just keep it simple.
Walk the kids through it every day repeating what you are doing now and what you are doing next. Try it out for at least two weeks.

Get Yourself A Calendar

One you will actually use! We love Google Calendar in our house, but I know a number of other families prefer to use a paper calendar stuck to the fridge or a huge chalkboard calendar. Other people swear by bullet journals. Whatever works for you.

Fill Out the Calendar in a Calm and Cool Frame of Mind

Start filling it out with ONLY the things you are already committed to doing. Now is the time to know if you are double booked.

Next comes the things you should do. I schedule mass times, confessions, and rest time into my calendar because they can become forgotten priorities.

Next comes the things you would like to do. Is there a place you have always wanted to go as a family? Schedule it in. Another family you would like to get to know better? Invite them for dinner and put it on the calendar. Don’t go super crazy, but allow yourself some dreaming room.

Now do the things on the calendar like it’s the law. Unless there is an honest to goodness emergency, honor the choices you made now when you are calm and collected.

Make Time for Rest!

The point of getting routines down to habit and your time organized is now you have more time for that oh so important rest time! If you are prone to going non-stop, schedule yourself some rest time.

Remember the kids need rest too! Even if you are homeschooling and home all day, schedule some quiet time for the non-nappers.

In our house we do about noon until 2:00pm as a quiet time, that I call turtle time for my iffy nappers. You don’t have to sleep, but you cannot get off your bed or be loud until 2:00. They gather whatever they want to do during turtle time before the start of quiet time, and that’s all they get until turtle time is over.

Kirby is a Texas girl who now calls the Minnesota Twin Cities Home. Mom to two little ones by day, ballet dancer and actress by night. Currently nesting for the new baby due in September! She blogs about Catholicism, parenting, homeschooling, and Ballet at Under Thy Roof. (Connect with Kirby on Facebook and Instagram)

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