The time management of a young child is not a strict schedule or productivity, but a development of the underlying executive functional skills, allowing any learning process to take place. We consider planning, prioritisation, and task shifting as very important aspects of school readiness at Kinder Ready Tutoring. Elizabeth Fraley Kinder Ready philosophy offers a very organised but still free-flowing construction of introducing such concepts, making daily routines a great lesson and the sense of agency in a child, a decrease in anxiety and a path to academic independence.
To a young learner, time is something abstract. The initial one in teaching time management is the tangibility and predictability of time. This is carried out by using the regularity of visual schedules and routines, which is a pillar of the Kinder Ready Elizabeth Fraley approach. A basic picture chart with the description of the morning routine, i.e. wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast, brush your teeth, etc., is a tangible map. This visual aid can assist a child to know what to do next, can make the child independent enough to carry out tasks and can minimise power conflicts. Such predictability results in a safe space where cognitive resources are no longer being used in dealing with the unpredictable, but in education. In Kinder Ready Tutoring, we have visual timers and sequence cards to plan our activities and teach children to operate within a certain time frame and to change transitions smoothly.
Task initiation and completion are closely associated with routine. Children at a tender age may require encouragement to engage in non-preferred activity and complete the process. The Elizabeth Fraley Kinder Ready methodology motivates the division of tasks into small and manageable steps- a concept referred to as chunking. A parent or tutor could instruct the child not to tidy up their toys, as they would say, but first put all the blocks in this bin. Now we shall put the books on the shelf. This brings the expectations understandable and possible to fulfil, creating the feeling of success with every step. We use this in our tutoring work, when we teach a child to work on a multi-step puzzle or writing task by breaking it down into individual parts, thus developing stamina and concentration.
The other important detail is the necessity to teach how to balance between attention and rest. The young brain is an explorer that has the best learning in small, concentrated bursts, then moving or resting. This rhythm is put in the Kinder Ready Tutoring model. We can take five minutes of intensive activity, then a quick physical exercise using a sand timer. This is a type of focus sprint that can be implemented at home by parents when a parent takes the children to read or draw. Such a habit teaches a child to concentrate all their attention on a task, knowing that there is a break, and this is much better than asking them to focus for long without a break, making them frustrated.
Finally, time management among young learners entails the integration of executive function structures in daily life. It is a proactive investment in self-regulation required to succeed in the classroom. Parents equip their child with an internal toolkit to manage tasks, time and transitions by simply adopting the visual, sequential, and balanced approaches that have been promoted by Elizabeth Fraley Kinder Ready. The cooperation with Kinder Ready Tutoring enhances these skills academically so that the child will develop these competencies under professional control. Such a two-fold strategy helps develop the learner as an organised, confident, and capable learner capable of handling the growing challenges of their learning process with independence and comfort.
For further details on Kinder Ready’s programs, visit their website: https://www.kinderready.com/.
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ElizabethFraleyKinderReady
