Time, money and tidiness

Dear families,

Today we're going to speak about three topics: Time, money management and tidiness. This is to teach them about the three subjects.

A good way to teach your children to read the time is to give them a toy analogue clock where they can manipulate the hands of the dial and make it go to any number and time. Teach them about their hours first (eg. 12:00, 1:00). I've always found digital clocks easier to read, especially when I was younger and just learning to tell the time. (I still find digital clocks easier to read than analogue, but it's like that for everyone, isn't it?)

Children usually learn by doing, so to better teach them about time, associate a particular hour to an event/their usual routine. For example: Lunch time is at 12:00 and dinner time is at 7:00. If bedtime is on a particular hour, use that too, but if it's at 7:30, leave that until a later date.

The next step is to teach them about their halves (eg. 7:30), so if bedtime is at 7:30pm, this would be a great opportunity to involve it.

The third step would be trying this with an analogue clock. Forget the minutes in between, as it can be too confusing, especially at first; we're focusing on every 30 minutes.

I was babysitting three children at once and one of them had autism (I've included this in a previous post about Autism). The middle, Autistic child loved to play video games, whether it was on the computer or via the TV, but I had to limit his video gaming because of three reasons: you're suppose to limit their screen time, he had a brother who also wanted to play a game on the computer and he would get overstimulated and easily frustrated when exposed to video games for too long. In keeping with this rule and to stop him from getting overstimulated, I would give him and his brother fifteen minutes in front of the screen at any given time. This was a great opportunity to teach him how to tell the time, whether it was on the computer or the analogue clock hanging up directly opposite him on the wall! Whenever he'd begin his screen time, we'd look at the clock and tell the time, after which I'd tell him that when the big hand got to a certain number (fifteen minutes later), he's time would be up and he'd need to move away. Ten minutes after, I'd remind him that he only had five minutes left and needed to finish his game (save and quit), by asking him what the time was and how many minutes he had left, and again at two minutes. As soon as his time was up, he'd try to convince me to allow him to play for a few minutes longer and sometimes I obliged, but most of the time I'd say "no."

Now we're going to learn about money management. It is good to start teaching children about money management, but do it in a simple way suitable for their age.

The first step is teaching your child how to count up to 10 and then up to 20, if not higher.

If your child is three+, you can buy a toy cash register, some plastic food and pretend money. If you want to be more cost effective, you can either buy a toy cash register, some food and some coloured cardboard that you can get from craft shops, Kmart, Big W, Bunnings and Masters, from which you can make denominations. Or you could go the entirely cost effective route: get a money box or cardboard box that's been lying around the house, make some bank notes (or bills, as Americans might say), and use any food items that you might have lying around the house.

Present the child with the food item(s) that you you wish to "buy" and ask them how much it costs, listing the denominations that you have. If they say that an apple costs $20 (how expensive is that? You'd hope it's a very good apple for $20!), but you don't have it, tell them what you do have, or if the money that you have adds up to $20+, add it up in front of them ("$5... plus $5... plus $5... plus $5 equals $20.00.")

If the child is older (say, 7+), you can enhance the experience by taking them shopping with you and putting them in charge of the shopping list and money. Set your limit, though. Supply them with a shopping list and calculator, and at every item you ask them how much it's listed as (they write it down), and add that denomination to the total cost. Once you've collected each item on your list, get your child to use their calculator and add up all of the prices to come up with the total price. If you're on a tight budget and an item takes you a few cents (quid or dimes) over your budget, notify your child that you'll have to put that item back. This helps them with their cognitive learning (thinking, maths, reading, and hand-eye-co-ordination) as well as their fine motor skills (writing and crossing items off of the list).

To teach your child how to keep their spaces (craft area as well as bedroom) clean, buy a tiered trolley on wheels (like this ClosetMaid Mini 6 cube storage organiser) and baskets or storage bins like this these ones: Small Smart Store System Tote (compartmentalise your craft items such as pencils, rubbers (aka erasers), stamps etc.), Small Weave Bin. Or you could even look around and buy an old wooden ladder (four round rungs with plenty of space in between) and some hanging baskets, or you could buy some ladder shelves, some magnets, glue and wire or plastic lattice baskets. I would recommend making all of your baskets, buckets or containers clear, if not open, so your child can see exactly what's in there (the items aren't going to get used if they are not clearly visible). 

With the ladder shelves, glue some of the magnets onto the ladder and the opposite magnets onto the baskets, and then place the baskets onto the ladder. Make sure that all of the magnets on the ladder are of the same, and the opposites on all of the baskets so you can place the baskets on any of the magnets and they are easily removable.

If you're going to go the hanging baskets way, you can easily buy some S shaped hooks at your local building supply warehouse.

You can even buy some blackboard labels so you can label each basket with what they contain, and you can easily change their titles when you change or rotate the items. This helps with your child's literacy.

To make your storage ladder more colourful and fun, include some spools of ribbon, some spools of wrapping paper, baskets of colourful paddle pop sticks, cotton balls, glitter, glue, glitter glue, textas, pencils, colourful paper, stamps and stickers. If there aren't enough room for the spools of ribbon you can use a picture frame (remove the front and back and screw some rods into it, hanging your ribbons off of it, or you can even use a multi-tiered hangers, which you can hang off of your ladder shelves. You can even place the spools of ribbon in an old shoe box and put an elastic around it to contain the end of your ribbons. You can use glass jars and wrapped around little squares of cardboard, but it's better if the ribbon's easily accessible and your child could just snip the required amount of ribbon off.You could even use an old, pull up straw dispenser that you can get from op-shops to store your spools in.

For the wrapping paper, you can screw some hooks into the wall, or into the ladder shelves, buy a few rods, thread your wrapping paper onto the rods and place into the hooks. Making everything colourful and easily accessible is key when enticing and entertaining children, and encouraging them to explore their imagination.

Well, they are my tips for now. I hope you and your children enjoy these educational and creative ideas.

Tokana

Ribbon ideas: http://www.livesimplybyannie.com/97-ways-to-store-your-ribbon/ 

*All of the blue and underlined words are links to where you can find the products. Some of them are Australian stores/websites and some are American, for example Dollar Tree.