My 10yo son is a dawdler. Big time. He can cram a 2 minute task into 15, easy peasy. This makes mornings at our house a bit frustrating. Since I drop him off at school on my way to work, he has to be ready to go on time, or mom will be late. Lately I have found myself stressing out every morning, hurrying him out the door, and still getting to his school just in time to get stuck in drop-off traffic. Not cool. So this morning, I had a brainstorm. The online stopwatch timer.
I used the Wii in our living room to go online and show the timer--full screen--as it counted down the seconds until time to go. I didn't even say anything to him, just let it run. Guess what? He was ready 5 minutes early! AWESOME! I'm thinking Mr. Timer will be our new morning helper.
BTW, this is also a great tool to use in the classroom. Give students a set amount of time for a task (centers, putting things away, share time, etc.) and let the timer be the bad guy. There's also a Bomb Countdown that blows up when it gets to zero!
