Keep Studying Simple and Color-Coded
“My son is totally disorganized when he studies. I tell him to clean off his desk; he tells me he likes to work that way. We often spend frantic mornings looking for the homework he did the night before. Sometimes he doesn’t even turn in the homework he did do.”
Discussion
In part one of this blog we set out the basic structure for homework success. Here we take it a step further. My friend, Debbie Gorenstein, an awesome third grade teacher and mother of three girls, and I share some simple techniques for organization that worked for our families. Many things were learned serendipitously, and others were gleaned from experience.
- Students need to have one backpack to transport things from home to school. Keep the packs in one place. In her classroom, Debbie uses a daily homework folder to keep new assignments and completed work organized as it passes from school to home and back.
- Debbie is big on color-coding things, using colors to organize the children’s folders in the classroom. Red is their writing folder, blue collects math activities, Spanish work goes in the yellow folder and literature group work remains in the white folder. This is a helpful way to organize papers and the children are very good at keeping materials together.
- You can use color-coded folders to organize all your important papers, too. Use one for each child, calendar events, school volunteer and PTA activities, bills to pay, extra-curricular activities, and those requests or events that still warrant consideration. If you can’t decide where to put a given item, put it in a manila folder with a label on the side. It is easier to find a labeled folder later on than a piece of paper buried in a pile.
- Try to find a regular time for homework.
- Collaborate with your kids to find the best time for them to study. Is it right after school, just before dinner, or after dinner? It may vary day-to-day depending on practices and lessons. Be flexible and adjust.
- When Debbie’s daughters were in grade school, they did homework as she made dinner or did daily classroom planning. They’d treat themselves to some milky tea (daughter Justine’s favorite) and sometimes exchange backrubs during difficult times. This regularity proved successful.
- Debbie says “Fall is a good organizing time. I will apply lessons learned from mistakes made last year, like the time I left a pile of ungraded math papers out on our kitchen table. Zoey, still a puppy, really did eat the children’s assignments!”
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If I knew then what I know now, I would have …
Fully embraced putting important papers in color-coded folders like I do now.
It is so much easier to find things.
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With admiration for all you do,
Dr. Kathy
Kathy Masarie, MD
Pediatrician, Parent, and Life Coach
Author of Raising Our Daughters and Raising Our Sons
Discover the Parenting Guides that will transform your relationship with your son or daughter today.
Hi! I’m Dr. Kathy. Welcome to my website! Although Family Empowerment Network is formally closed, we want to keep these resources available to you. Our belief is that parents are the most wise and intuitive about what is best for their children. However, parents sometimes need the support of effective, timeless, compassionate parenting information and strategies. On this website you will find our three parenting books on boys, girls, and kids’ social lives and ten years of monthly newsletter articles. In addition, a powerful, under-recognized resource is the support of other parents. Here you will find how to use our books as discussion guides for monthly self-led parenting groups. One last resource: I am still available to give talks and workshops.
