8 Best Ideas to Keep Your Child Stay Organised
Why Staying Organized is Essential
“People form habits, and the habits form their lives.”
At MIT Gurukul, we concur with this adage fully and appreciate its wisdom. Being one of the top IB schools in Pune, we grasp that staying organized is a sure way to get more done in less time. It helps one achieve quality results from the daily schedules, and achieve one’s goals in a seamless manner. Getting into the habit of maintaining clutter-free environments, setting reminders and keeping timeline calendars are some ways to help a child get into the habit of making the most of their time. It leads to more productivity, higher output and better quality of one’s study or work week. Forming these organizational habits is crucial at an early stage, and some of the ways in which the home and the school can encourage and help children stay organized are as under:
· Setting timetables:
Time tables put tasks and activities for a child in slots of time, and help them navigate their day in a predictable, easy to follow and hassle-free manner. They also develop in the child the capability of understanding the logical sequence of study, play, extracurricular activities, and meal and rest times. Time table teaches them time management skills for the long term, which they can use in their higher education and professional years later. At MIT, one of the top residential schools in Mumbai, we give each child a personalized timetable that they are also encouraged to check and follow.
· Creating Memory Aids:
Memory aids include associating tasks with certain symbols, things or reminder stickers that can be displayed at places that are within the child’s vision. Examples can include associating study time with the symbol of addition and multiplication which symbolises adding knowledge and multiplying skills. Small jingles for remembering important tasks for the day like completing homework, setting clothes for the next day, packing bags etc can put the fun in the child’s schedule.
· Using Checklists:
Checklists are lists of items to pack, things to accomplish in a certain time, study aids that need to be collected at one place for a project etc. By making and following checklists the child ensures that all equipment or accessories are together at the beginning and does not need to keep going back to get more items once the task has started. This habit inculcates in the child logical sequencing, understanding the interdependence of things with each other and how they are all essential to form a complete whole from individual parts. This works to raise the logical understanding quality in children.
· Colour coding:
Colour coding subjects, activities, times of the day etc. are fun ways to teach the child to remember important schedules, activities and projects based on certain colours. Associating green for gardening, blue for watercolour work, red for arts and theatre, yellow for waking up early, black for setting the bag and uniform at night for the next day can be some colour associations. The child can also be taught to associate colours with personal qualities that help him become more organized. This can include white for being neat and tidy in one’s workspace, pink for consideration for others and maintaining work boundaries, and yellow for consistency and discipline.
· Weekly clean-ups:
Among the best IB schools in Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Delhi and the rest of India, MIT Gurukul lays great importance on cleaning and organizing workspaces. The students are motivated to set their own study desks, tidy their residency rooms, and maintain their stationery items in workable formats. This ensures that every student grows a sense of responsibility, using resources in sustainable ways and respecting the study spaces of other students.
· Using dashboards:
Dashboards are pin-up boards where a child can put up their artwork. It can be used to put up reminders for important tasks, exam schedules, mark dates for their school events, their friend’s birthdays and anything else that they want to. These multipurpose boards have a great role in making the recall value for things better for the child and for them to vent their thoughts, and creative ideas and work in one place.
· Peer and sibling pairing:
Pairing siblings at home and making groups of two at school as organizing buddies is an unconventional yet very effective tool to help a child remain organized. By setting up timetables and schedules to work out together the sibling or school buddy becomes a point of reference for the child to work in a pair for maintaining time slots of combined activities, studies, cleaning up and setting a plan for the coming week. Doing things together also raises the motivation levels of children to keep up with their more organized buddies.
· Slots on work desks or shelves:
This method is also in vogue and involves making work desk drawers into daily activity material holders. The child puts the materials to be used for each day of the week into the slots at the beginning of the week and thus keeps reminded of what is to be achieved during the week. This saves time for the child at the actual time of the activity since the study or other activity materials have been gathered in one place already.
Call to Action & Conclusion
In conclusion, we can say that the habit of keeping organized should be developed early and its benefits go a long way till the end of a person’s life. We request parents to adopt some of these into their child’s life and help them become focused on their study approach. We also encourage parents to visit the school and discuss different methods to help their child stay organized with their respective class teachers.
