How can I get my son to keep time during school time?
I am homeschooling my 8 year old son, who has a lot for trouble completing his school work in good time. I have tried giving him a nice stretch of time per subject but this doesn't seem to work. How can I get him to understand that there isn't time for everything and we just can sit around all day working on one page of sums and yet there are 5 more subjects to be tackled as well life outside academics?
(7)7 Comments
Sorted by latest first Latest Oldest Best
The other answers provide sensible suggestions for improving time management skills, and you should certainly give these a try first. However, if your son does not respond to those techniques it could potentially be due to an underlying medical condition. Learning disabilities are extremely common and, although not curable, respond well to the proper treatment if caught early enough.
I have given links to more information about two possible conditions below, but it is important that you seek professional guidance if your are concerned. Discuss the situation with your doctor, and if your doctor agrees, discuss it with your son (but make it clear he had done nothing wrong).
Dyscalculia - difficulties with arithmatic (or "Dyslexia for maths") www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/dyslexic/dyscalculia
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) - difficulties with concentration and time-management www.helpguide.org/articles/add-adhd/attention-deficit-disorder-adhd-in-children.htm
If your son does have one of these conditions then it is certainly not "the end" and it doesn't make him "stupid". These conditions are common, relatively minor, and should respond well to proper treatment. However, early diagnosis is important to prevent more serious secondary problems developing such as depression or low self-esteem. You must recognise and appreciate that your son is making a genuine effort, even though the results may not be what you (or he) wanted.
If your son does have one of these conditions most aspects of life will not be affected at all. Many children struggle with maths and time-management skills even without a diagnosable condition. If your son struggles with maths then there are plenty of other careers out there to choose from.
Have you tried posting a schedule and a clock predominantly in the room?
In schools teachers set schedule of the activities students will be doing throughout the day. In younger grades it's written on the board up front, and in older grades each student has their own schedule and they change classrooms for their classes.
Schools (in the US anyway) have large clocks in each room and around the hallways and then alarm for the various periods, forcing students to keep their schedule.
To mimic this I would put a clock on the wall in the room that he works in and then just print a schedule of what you want to do that day.
(You could set of a periodic alert / alarm to signal time but that's probably more than you're looking for. However procrastination becomes a HUGE issue you could always try it.)
Then when the time for some activity ends, stop the activity. In a school if you are in Math taking a test and the bell rings, the test is over. What you didn't answer is wrong. If this seems tough, remember if they were working for a company and had a deadline, if he doesn't finish on time then the project fails.
(Not that you have to fail your homeschool student :) Just that you could make him stop doing something when the time is over.
There is a productivity technique called the Pomodoro technique that you can adapt to try and help your son focus. Get an egg timer and give him 20 min sprints. Have him work for 20 and if he's made good progress give him a 5 min break. Remove all distractions from his area, no outside books, posters, tv, etc. You might play a little quite symphony music as a background noise if he needs it. After a couple of these sprints have him do whatever he wants for a 20 min sprint. Let him read a book of choice, ride a bike around the block, etc. I would suggest something active for 20 min as kids in general do better after exercise concentrating (it's a big reason why cutting gym and playgrounds is such a horrible idea for school districts).
The other thing I would do is sit him down and talk to him. Let him know your thoughts on his education and why you think his studies are important. Then get his views. Is there a subject he would like to learn instead? There are various ways to integrate his interests into his studies and still get through what you need to for him to meet grade level. Have him help you plan out his daily schedule, that way he learns a little about organization and maybe feels a bit more part of the entire process. If he can start to set his own goals, and really take ownership in his work day, that can have longer lasting effects than the base memorization of facts.
Kids need four things to learn self-regulation skills like time management:
Tools to help, such as posted lists and verbal reminders.
Autonomy to make decisions about the use of their time.
Constraints that set the limits of that autonomy.
Immediate consequences for failure or success that are personally meaningful.
Usually what parents skip is the autonomy. They tend to micromanage children's time on the things parents find important, forcing children to resist in order for their own wants to receive consideration, and giving children little practice in making good decisions.
For example:
It's time for math. These problems should take you around 15 minutes. I've allocated an hour. That's when the little hand is on the ten and the big hand is on the twelve. If you finish before then and do it correctly, you can play for the remainder of the hour.
Here you're setting constraints: math must be done before playing and if you dawdle you'll lose the play time. However, you're also granting autonomy within those constraints: he can choose either to maximize his playing time by working quickly, or mope the entire hour. The consequence of success or failure is personally meaningful, and felt immediately.
Then after fifteen minutes, you check on him. If he hasn't made any progress, don't get angry or nag him. Just emphasize that it's his decision. He can control whether he will play this hour or not. If he has obstacles outside his control, he can ask you to help remove them.
Oh, I thought you might be done by now. I guess you decided to be sad instead of working quickly so you could play. Are you stuck needing help on something? Okay, well I hope you'll choose to work quickly so you can play soon. I don't like it when you're sad.
It might take a few weeks of doing this before he really starts to view it as under his own control. Then you can gradually relax the constraints.
You didn't mention how long you've been homeschooling, or whether your son was previously enrolled in school. This might be applicable anyway if you've been following a school-at-home approach. Many kids do a lot better after a "deschooling" period, especially if their school experience has been mostly negative. That basically means you take a break from anything school-like for a while, several weeks or months, even. Then reintroduce it slowly, maybe an hour a day at first.
Kids with negative schooling experiences often get into a habit of resistance, basically from being burned out. The deschooling break helps them get out of that habit. If they are only burned out on one subject, maybe just take a break from that subject.
Also keep in mind that this is a sign that the material is uninteresting, or being given at too slow or fast a pace. Try different curricula, find games that teach the concepts, adjust the challenge level to match his abilities. Try to tie his interests in with what you want him to learn. Math worksheets are boring. Figuring out how many stacks of cobblestone he needs to build a certain house in minecraft is interesting, and may actually require more challenging math skills.
Remember to ground all of this in core principles of "reward good behaviour" and "see from the child's point of view".
Children are not good at understanding time and your child doesn't know the workload. You do understand time, and you know what the workload is, and so there is a tension created.
Here are some things you can try:
1) Have a large, clear, clock, with easy to read numbers. Keep making reference to the clock. Say "It is eleven o'clock now, and it is time for our lesson on arithmetic. We have half an hour! Let's start!".
2) Introduce an element of competition. Try using an egg timer. "Wow you've worked really hard at this lesson. Here are some problems. Do you think you can beat the timer? Do you think you can solve this problem before the timer runs out?" The competitions should start as very easy to win - 3 minutes for each problem. You increase the difficulty as your child increases skill.
3) Keep referring to time. "We have twenty more minutes for this topic! How many problems have you got? How much time do you have left for each topic?"
4) Make sure that the child is not bored by questions that are too easy or frustrated by lack of understanding of complex questions. Always check your child's understanding.
Hope this is useful! (Let me know in a comment if I have misunderstood your question!)
Other answers have successfully 1) addressed helping him find motivation for completing his work; and 2) pointed out that the time constraints required by one teacher educating a group of disparate kids are not required here, suggesting ways you can -- if you like -- make the problem go away.
My suggestion is for helping him grasp the concept of passing time, since, as most have pointed out, 8-year-olds don't really understand it. Even my 11-year old thinks she can fit way too many non-essential tasks into the next twenty minutes she has before bed/school/soccer/etc.
Tell him that you need to do several other things today, then make time more concrete by pointing out the movement of the sun. Say, "When you got up the sun was here, when we started math the sun was here, and now it's here." Point overhead and swing your arm to demonstrate. "When the sun gets to here, you have to get ready for bed. In that time we have to ..." and list the tasks, including play time, swinging your arm to show how much time you expect them to take. "I want to spend only twenty more minutes" --here you can show it on the clock (assuming it's analog) as well as swing your arm-- "on math before we move on to" ...whatever.
I also used to tell my daughter that time is sneaky, and it tries to sneak past when you're not paying attention, whether or not you're doing anything. I think the point here is to challenge her to pay attention to it, so she can get done the things she needs to.
Hope this helps.
One of the advantages of home schooling is that you don't have to keep to a schedule the way you do in a school situation. You can do the work in an order and pattern that fits with how your child works. If you think your child has grasped adding, they don't need to sit and do worksheets or problems that cover material they already know. If you think your child hasn't grasped adding, you can work adding practice into all your other topics. Doing geography and looking at some property of the cities in a country? Add them up to see how many whatevers are in the whole country. At the store buying things? Ask the child to keep your running total as you put things in the cart, with a paper and pencil if need be. Heading to the park for an hour of fun? Ask him those same worksheet questions (or ones you make up yourself) out loud on the way there.
If you're just going to recreate a classroom with schedules, worksheets, one subject at a time, and the like, you are missing many of the advantages of being the one who teaches your child. Do it a way that works for you and your family, not the way everyone else does.
Terms of Use Privacy policy Contact About Cancellation policy © freshhoot.com2025 All Rights reserved.