Make sure adequate breaks are built in. Many children have a great deal of difficulty working for long stretches of time on homework without a break. Better to plan for a two hour homework session with frequent breaks built in than to try to cram homework into a one-hour, non-stop session. You can sue a kitchen timer to keep breaks to a reasonable length (e.g., 5-10 minutes). Breaks might be used to get a snack, play a few minutes of a Nintendo game, or to shoot baskets or do some other form of exercise. Breaks should be scheduled when tasks get accomplished rather than after a set period of time, otherwise your child can daydream the time away and still get his break. One child we know arranges homework sessions between TV shows he likes to watch. Thus, his schedule on any given day might look like this:
4:30 math
5:00 TV show
5:30 language arts
6:00 dinner
6:30 social studies
7:00 TV show
8:00 science
8:30 TV show
9:00 bed time
If he hasn’t finished whatever task he was working on when his television program comes on, he either misses the program or tapes it watch at a later time.
