Google Calendar offers a great solution for practicing Organization, Planning, and Time Management. Try some of the suggestions below and let us know how the application works for you at the bottom of the page. 

Organization Activity

Organizing schedules for groups is an excellent use of Google Calendar’s share feature. Try using the application to keep your family organized. Plotting shared events like “Dinner” or individual events such as work and school schedules can help keep a family in sync. Use Google Calendar’s sharing feature to create a family calendar, using different colors to represent each member of the family. Encourage the family to update their calendars to reflect changes in daily and weekly schedules. Having an example of effective organization of time can also help your child to better asses and organize his own commitments.

Planning Activity

Your child should make calendar updates a part of his daily routine in order to make Google Calendars an effective organizational and planning tool. Whenever he wants to take on a new commitment (like a sport or other extracurricular activity), encourage him to check his schedule to make sure he can fit another event into his routine, and that he has enough time to complete important priorities. When new school assignments arise, encourage your child to add the due dates to Google Calendar. For smaller assignments, like nightly homework, it might be easier to create a general repeating “Homework” event. For larger assignments, like group projects, creating an event for the final due date, sharing it with others and creating individual events will allow him to work with classmates in small increments, spreading out the work load across several individuals and days. These are just some of the many ways Google Calendars can be used as an effective way to facilitate Planning.

Time Management Activity

Your child will need to judge how long homework assignments, projects, and other tasks will take him to complete, and then allott that time into Google Calendars. For example, if your child has a book that needs to be finished within two weeks, he should schedule an hour or more each night so that he makes steady progress towards completing the assignment on time. Work with your child to gain an understadning of his pace, like how much reading he gets done within an hour, or how long an average work load of homework takes to complete. Add new long term and short term assignments to the schedule, with an estimated time allowance that reflects your child's unique pace. Track this information over time, noting and rewarding any improvements in efficiency.

Google Calendar & ADHD

Google Calendar is a particularly useful online tool for children with ADHD who struggle with timeliness  There is also a mobile app called GooCal, that allows children to sync their calendars remotely. Children with ADHD need a utility that helps introduce structure into their lives. Google Calendar's suite of features and colorful display, makes it use not only helpful - but also fun. Children with ADHD, will be able to make better use of their time, when they are fully aware of their daily commitments.

How to Use Google Calendar for Children with ADHD

• Because the calendar allows information to be presented by the day, week, and month, children with ADHD can get a sense of their availability over long periods of time. For daily events, children should enter all information necessary about an assignment or reminder. Weekly events will carry less information, but give a better representation of free time over the course of 7 days. The monthly calendar view, allows children to view their commitments over the course of a month. Children with ADHD should record each every event into each category, recognizing the different types of information each category mandates. Monthly descriptions will be the of event and time, weekly descriptions allow more room for detain, and daily entries denote the exact requirements of the event. Children must be able to distinguish among the various types of information, and appropriately associate each category with its most applicable description.

• Children with ADHD who are involved in athletics or extra-curricular activities, can share via e-mail their Google Calendars with friends and family. When aunts and uncles wish the attend a recital or an athletic event, they will have all the information at their fingertips. Not only does Google Calendar help to keep friends and family aware childrens' schedules, it also allows children to coordinate plans, and attend their events with punctuality.

• Children with ADHD should make use of the calendar's  mobile version, GooCal. GooGal is like a portable daily planner, allowing children to enter their homework assignments as they are assigned. The mobile app helps to combat forgetfulness and oversight when it comes to creating events and reminders. The mobile version is simply a mirror of Google Calendar, but with a little less functionality, as the app version makes entering extended descriptions of events a bit time-consuming.

Google Calendar is just one option for keeping an organized schedule. Try out some of the options below and let us know your favorite option in the comment field at the bottom of the page.

iCal

iCal comes standard on Apple devices, and can be another great tool for staying organized. iCal offers similar color-coding and reminder features for managing time. Read our iCal review for more.

Calendars

Calendars is a series of apps for Apple devices that allows users to combine their Google Calendar with the standard calendar on their device for one complete overview of their schedule. Find out more here.

Awesome Calendar

Awesome Calendar offers a stylish interface, multiple view options, and even to-do list tools for keeping organized and on task. Find out more here.