How to help your kids to be organized

These days, our kids have very busy lives, and it can be very overwhelming for them to keep track of their own challenging schedules. Below are some tips on how you can help your kids to grow into productive, effective and organized young adults. Organizational skills are very important in life, and the sooner we teach our kids, the better they will do in their adult lives.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• A large wall calendar
• An agenda
• Bright colored Post-its
• Paper tray
• Sharpies Markers
• Pencil holder

1. Set up a time with your kids to talk about how you can work as team to improve his or hers organizational skills. Make a list together of all their weekly scheduled activities(piano lessons, soccer practice, karate, etc.). Create an excel chart or a handmade activities chart for each kid and hang it on their bedroom wall, next to their wall calendar. It is important that each kid have their own chart and their own wall calendar. When buying the wall calendar, bring your kids to the store with you and help them choose a themed-calendar of their liking, but make sure it has substantial amount of writing space, so it's easier for them to use it. In our family, we chose a plain office-like wall calendar, clean with big squares and plenty of writing space.
2. Develop a daily routine for your kids to keep their calendar updated. As soon as they arrive from school, they should quickly check their calendar and write new important dates, before handing you their school notices, this way you'll have the dates and so will they. Keep a paper tray in a common area in your house labeled wit their names, so they can just drop their notices in the tray. Keep their colored sharpies near their calendar in a pencil holder. Teach them to color coordinated the subject matters(blue for language arts, green for math, and so on). For the long term assignments, teach them to repeat a notice to themselves as the due date approaches, they can be creative and draw little star bursts, whatever catches their attention. This will teach them time management, which is another great skill to learn early in life. They can also use bright-colored post-its on the bathroom mirror, or their bedroom door, on their backpack as a visual reminder to themselves of the very important dates, for that "last-minute-run-out-the-door" item that needs to be returned to school.
3. If your school does not have an school agenda, you should buy one for your kid. All the dates on the wall calendar should be copied on their agenda as well. You should also encourage your kids to write everything in their agenda, notes to themselves, ideas, questions. It becomes a personal journal as well, this will help them remember their dates and thoughts, as well as develop important note-taking skills.
4. Keep it fun, kids love to be organized. Buy some fun stickers for the younger ones to encourage them to keep improving. You will get rid off so much useless stress in your family life, they will fell proud of themselves, and being organized becomes part of their daily routine, just as you are addicted to your iphone, trio, palm.