For High School Students- Making a Schedule

When my adult daughters were in high school, and drowning in all their activities, they would often get frustrated that they never had enough time. At that point, I would hand them this handy-dandy form (below) that I have and tell them to fill it in.

This is how it worked- I would have my daughter fill in all of her non-negotiable activities. So, things like soccer practice, Irish dance, Latin class, babysitting job... would all be filled in in ink. This first step helped my daughter (s) to realistically look at her schedule and see where all of her time was going. Then I would have her make several photo copies of this filled in form.

(I filled out a few activities give an idea of how it would look- there are time slots to 10 p.m.)

At this point, on one of the copies, she filled in the things that were a bit more flexible (things that have to get done, but when is a more negotiable). Everything from getting up in the morning, working on school assignments, chores, and maintaining her own personal space and belongings get written in on the schedule. This is the moment when she could look at her schedule, and, in black and white, see where all of her time was going and how much time she had.

The point to this exercise was to allow her to make better decisions on how she spent her time and to help her navigate her week. I could tell my daughter (s) until I was blue in the face that she needed to cut back or say no to something, but having her look realistically at the situation took some that decision making off of my shoulders and put it on hers.

The extra copies of the forms that had the non-negotiable activities filled in allowed my daughter to revisit the schedule and revise it as needed.

My current teen daughter may being seeing this form soon!! :)
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***This would probably all be done on the computer now, but this form is "old school". No home computers for us back then!

Comments

  1. UnknownMay 29, 2010 at 5:14 PM

    This is an excellent idea! A great tool for teaching time management.

    ReplyDelete

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