8 Tips for Developing Your Child's Organisational Skills
Organisation can be a tricky skill to teach and equally tricky to learn. Regardless, it is an important skill that will set your kids up for life. These 8 tips will give you insight into how to help your child develop this critical skill.
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Make a to-do list
A to-do list can help your child stay on track. Many people are visual learners, so writing out the tasks can provide a visual aid.
Whiteboards make great places to write a to-do list. Your child can tick off tasks once completed and rewrite new tasks as they come along.
If your little one is too young to write, encourage them to draw pictures instead.
Use colour-coding
Assign a colour to each category. This may refer to school subjects, toys and clothes. For example, file all English homework in the red folder and maths homework in the blue folder.
Alternatively, assign an animal or other characters to each category.
Establish morning routines
Establish morning routines to teach the importance of completing all tasks within the required time frame.
Routines aren’t always the same from day-to-day. This is why it is important to explain the concept of time and the weekly calendar. This is useful to get your little ones ready for Saturday sports and the school week.
Involve your children in your planning
Involve your kids in the planning process so they can learn how to organise something ahead of time.
Let your young ones choose some activities for the upcoming family holiday and help you slot them into the calendar.
Before the new school year, ask your child what they need to do to prepare. Suggest they make a shopping list for their stationery.
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Make chores fun
Everyone loves games. What’s to say you can’t turn chores into games?
Assign chores that involve sorting or categorising. Ensure you have adequate shelving space to avoid a cluttered, disorganised space.
Sort books on a bookshelf from tallest to shortest. Hide treats under their pillow before they make their bed. Reward your child with stickers once they have completed their chores.
Break up big tasks into smaller ones
Large or time-consuming tasks can appear overwhelming. Breaking them up into smaller tasks makes them easier to tackle.
Here are some examples:
When making the bed, instruct your little ones to first move the pillows out of the way. Then tuck in the sheet followed by the duvet before reorganising the pillows.
When clearing the table after dinner, leftovers on a plate are first scraped into the garbage before being loaded into the dishwasher. Once the table is clear, then it is wiped down.
Remove distractions from the study room
A distracted child will struggle to stay organised and complete the task at hand.
Their homework area should be free from toys, noise and movement. Consider setting up blinds or partitions to remove any distractions and provide privacy.
Equip the area with all they require to complete their homework. This may include scrap paper, stationery and a calculator.
Teach your kids the art of planning
Children live in the present moment. This is an excellent skill to have and is often forgotten in adulthood. However, grasping the concept of the future is also important.
Discuss the plan for the next day with your child or even ask them how they are planning to spend their day. They will associate this awareness of the future with security.
Organisation is a learned behaviour. Incorporate small tasks seamlessly into your child’s life to teach them the value of organisation. As they start to grasp this concept, give your child more freedom in their planning and decision-making.
Cloe’s organisational skills come in handy in her freelance writing career, especially working across various projects and managing deadlines. Visit her Tumblr page to learn more about her and her written work.