Learning how to properly manage and prioritize time is a life skill every successful person has. There are always so many hours in the day, and always a mile-long to-do list. One of the most important life lessons you can teach your child is how to manage their time.

Here are just a few life benefits that our time management tips for kids lead to:

•  Better performance at work and school

• Increased responsibility and independence

•  More opportunities to relax and unwind

•  Extra time for family and friends

•  Reduced anxiety when project dates or test dates are due

After looking at the list above, I’m sure we can all agree, that time management skills are important. But what age is the right age to start teaching your child the importance of time? How early is too early?

According to Dorothy Rich, author of MegaSkills: Building Our Children’s Character and Achievement for School and Life, with the help of practiced exercises, children as young as the age of 2-years-old have the capabilities to learn about the concept of time and manage their time independently.  So you don’t have to wait until your child is in school to teach them positive time management habits. The earlier you teach your children how to handle their time, the easier everyone’s life will be.

Ready to learn time management tips for kids? Scroll down to view helpful time management tips for kids in specific age ranges.

Pre-School Kids (3 – 5 Years Old)

Make time management fun

One of the key ingredients you’ll need to teach your preschool age kids time management skills is, you guessed it, fun! Instead of introducing time management as a chore, introduce it as a new, “big kid” responsibility that’s tied with games and crafts.

Help them make their own calendars with markers and crayons and use special stickers to mark special occasions. For real chores like picking up toys and getting ready for bed, play the game, “how fast can you get this chore done?”, and reward them with stickers. The more fun you make time management lessons, the more likely your kids are to cooperate with you and participate.

Here are some links to free printable calendars you can use with your little ones:

Show them how to measure time

Knowing how to measure time is one of the first steps to establishing positive time management habits. So over the next couple of months, focus on helping your little one understand the difference between different time blocks.

Use a visual timer to show them how many minutes are in one of their daily activities, like watching a tv show or taking a bath. Or have them announce what time it is when you leave your house, and then the time it is when you arrive to your location. Then help them calculate how many minutes you spent driving.

As soon as your preschooler knows how long common time increments are, they’ll be one step closer to pairing time increments with activities like taking a trip to grandma’s house or cleaning their room.

Elementary Aged Kids (6 – 10 years old)

Help them run their own schedule

Elementary school is the perfect time to give your child more ownership over their own schedule. With more responsibilities like homework, studying for tests, and extracurricular activities, your kid will have a lot of activities and deadlines to juggle.

Helping them put together and run their schedule will teach them how to be aware of deadlines and tie time to commitments.  Each week, sit down with your kids and help them map out what homework assignments, tests, and other commitments they coming up. Then help them set aside how much time it’ll take them to adequately prepare for each activity.

Fun calendaring tip: While helping your kids calendar out their week, schedule extra time to complete a task. Teaching them early on to calculate more time to complete tasks will save them from procrastinating.

Stick to the schedule

As tempting as it is to stop homework time 5 minutes early or push it out for another 20 minutes, it’s important that you and your child stick to the schedule. When the time is up for one task, move on to the next, no matter how involved they are with their current task. Staying off schedule for even a couple of minutes can throw kids off. So stick to the schedule, especially in those early days and weeks of learning about time.

Be clear about consequences

By this age, elementary-aged kids can and should be held accountable for their own assignments. They also need to experience consequences when they don’t complete their tasks. Sometimes those consequences happen naturally, like scoring low on a test when your kid scrimps on their study time. Other times, you as the parent need to step in and set up the consequence. If your kid decides to skip out on homework time or their chores, then they’ve decided to give up their screen time or playtime rights.

Before setting up these new rules, sit down with your children and explain to them the relationship between time management and consequences. When they drop the ball and end up missing a homework assignment or telling you last minute about a school project, ask them why they fell behind, and talk about what consequences they’re going to face.

Tweens (10 – 13 years old)

Help them plan out long-term assignments or projects

Upper elementary school and middle school is the time where kids start to receive long-term projects. It’s also the time where they’ll learn how to prepare for big projects over a long period of time. So help them stay on track by breaking down their big assignment work into small chunks.

If they have a science fair project that’s due in 1 month, help them figure out how they can make progress on that project every week. And get very granular in this process. Write down by what date each part of the project needs to be completed, and how much time your child should spend working on their project each day. By fully mapping out a schedule for each long-term project, you’ll teach your kids how to properly prepare for future important classes and work assignments.

Emphasize communication

Once your child is in middle school, they’ll no longer just be working with one teacher. Now, they’ll be receiving homework assignments from multiple teachers. And these teachers most likely won’t be aware of other teacher’s class assignments and due dates. Therefore, it’s up to your child to up their communication skills and learn how to check-in regularly with their teachers about their homework assignments.

So challenge them each month to meet with their teachers and talk about homework deadlines and how they can best prepare for their future tests / projects. Teaching your child the importance of constant communication around workloads, expectations, and deadlines, will set them up to successfully maneuver heavy workloads at school and in their future career.

Introduce time management tools

Today’s new generation is no stranger to technology, so help them get a better handle on managing their time with time management tools. Google calendar is a free scheduling tool that your middle schooler can set-up right away. With Google calendar, they can sync the calendar to their phone and your personal Google calendar. This way you’ll always be in the loop and aware of future homework assignments and deadlines.

Trello is another free collaboration tool that’s great for scheduling. With Trello, your child can use different boards, lists, or cards to organize and prioritize their day-to-day activities. They can also use Trello to build out a calendar that is high-level at first glance, but then turns granular with attachments, due dates, labels, and involved team-members.

Lastly, if your child needs a physical reminder to keep them on track, gift them a trusty planner. With a planner, they can stay on top of their class schedules and assignments in a way that works best for them.

Teenagers (14 – 18 years old)

By high school, most student’s schedules are filled to the brim. During this stage in life, having great time management skills will set good students apart from excellent students. So use these tips to help your high schooler stay on top of their workload and excel in their classes.

Have them fill out a time audit

Auditing your time is one of the easiest ways you can identify exactly when during your day you are being efficient and productive, and when you are not. So challenge your high schooler to track their daily behaviors and habits for one week. After the week is up, sit down with them and see which days / times they are most productive, and which days / times they start to nod off. Then work with them to help them lower their wasted time and up their productivity time.

Click here for the audit sheet.

Help them set priorities with the Eisenhower Box

Here’s a fun fact: President Dwight Eisenhower lived an incredibly productive life and launched the U.S. Interstate Highway System, DARPA, NASA missions, and the peaceful use of energy sources (Atomic Energy Act). So, how did he manage to lead and execute all of those major projects all within 2 terms? He used the Eisenhower Box.

The Eisenhower Box is a matrix anyone can use to separate your actions based on four possibilities:

1. Urgent and important (tasks you need to do asap)
2. Important but not urgent (tasks you can schedule to do later)
3. Urgent, but not important (tasks you can delegate to someone else)
4. Neither urgent or important (tasks you don’t need to spend time on)

Learn more about the Eisenhower Box and how to use it for monthly and daily plans here.

Want to help your child develop more positive study habits? Sign them up for a Think Academy December Short-Term course!