The end of the summer is a great time for getting yourself organized, and enlisting your child to help clean up your garage or straighten up the basement presents an excellent opportunity for improving one of your child’s important core executive functions – Organization. Getting your child involved is a great way to help them while they help you. Spend time doing something constructive with your kids while developing a few simple routines that they can apply during the school year and beyond.

Believe it or not, organization is actually a skill that most children desire. If your child has difficulties in retrieving her homework, finding the book she needs to complete her vacation reading, or even uncovering her favorite pair of jeans in her bedroom, having her help you find proper places for household items is a fantastic chance to improve organization in a non-pressured, and even fun, fashion. Even the most disorganized child will report that she feels a sense of accomplishment when she gets her bedroom clean or her backpack organized. While the effort to get organized may be overwhelming to many children, maintaining and improving organization may be even more difficult than getting organized. Follow our late-summer program for making improved organization fun by combining games, apps, activities and physical exercise.

Get organized for school… with video games. Games like Clash of Clans and Cargo Bridge are engaging opportunities to practice and improve organizational skills. First Then Visual Schedule and Boximize are both easy-to-learn apps that are great tools for supporting organizational skills. When you use these games and apps in conjunction with LearningWorks for Kids’ Playbooks, there is no doubt that you will see an increase in your child’s motivation to get more organized. Once your kids recognize how organizational skills can help them in their recreational activities, you can connect these game-based skills to taking care of some basics at home and school.

Here are a few ideas for practicing and improving organizational skills as the summer winds down:

1. Out with the old and in with the new. Have your child go through all of their clothing and sort it so that clothing that no longer fits or is not wanted goes in one pile, and clothing that is still useful is in another pile. Wait until this task is completed and then reward his or her organizational efforts by going school shopping for new clothes.

2. Make a business out of cleaning and organizing. Engage your children in helping you to clear out storage spaces like garages, closets, and basements. Then offer them 50% of all sales of items that you have salvaged by selling them via eBay, Craigslist, or in a yard sale.

3. Organize sporting equipment. Many garages, sheds, and basements are full of old baseballs, golf clubs, bicycles, and other sporting goods. Work hard at organizing all athletic materials into bins and containers and encourage your kids to find a way to donate stuff that they have outgrown.

4. Organize an athletic event. Get your child to help coordinate a walk, a tennis match, or a softball game with other family members and friends. Help them to find a time, location, and a list of people that they would like to invite and then keep track of RSVPs.

Read more about how Organization is used in your child’s daily life, then find other resources for developing this thinking skill in your child by viewing games and apps that focus on building organization.