Ask any teacher or student about their favorite day of the week, and you’ll get varied responses. Some will say they like Fridays, when the work week winds down and the weekend stretches ahead. Some will declare a love for Saturdays, when they’ve had a good night’s sleep and have nothing pressing on the agenda for the next day.
No teachers will express enthusiasm for Sunday, and here’s why: it’s the day teachers spend getting ready for the week ahead. It’s a work day. And while it’s kind of a pain, teachers have figured out a secret that smart students would be wise to adopt.
The secret is that those who do their Sunday work reap the benefits for the rest of the week. Sunday is a day to get ahead, get organized, and get on top of the tasks unfolding Monday through Friday. In other words, Sunday matters!
Six reasons why Sunday matters to your student:
- Sunday is a day your child can sleep in and be rested. If your kid has had sleep and a break from school on Saturday, Sunday is now the perfect time to tackle long-term projects, extra studying, and tougher tasks.
- Sunday provides a great weekly checkpoint for parents and students to get on the same page. If Mom and Dad aren’t working and pulled in many directions, everyone can sit down, review tasks for the week ahead, talk about homework and projects, and discuss any issues that have come up over the last week. Students are more likely to open up and share their thoughts on school if they don’t feel pressured to finish homework between soccer practice and dinner.
- Sunday is ideal for weekly organizing. If your child’s binders are exploding with un-filed papers and his backpack is a haz-mat situation, consider using Sundays for weekly organizing time. Your child should gather all papers from the backpack and binder pockets and sort them into stacks by subject. Another stack would be for anything that goes to parents — forms, permission slips, announcements. A throw-away pile is okay, too, for papers that are no longer needed. Have your child staple, hole-punch, and file papers as needed into the rights spots in his binder. Kids who do this weekly get better at keeping their things organized and are less likely to forget and lose papers.
- Sunday allows for longer stretches of time to focus. Unlike busier weekdays, Sunday is a day your child can grab big chunks of uninterrupted time to devote to school work. This can be especially helpful for kids who feel overwhelmed by schoolwork or who are slow, methodical workers.
- Sunday gives you a chance to get to the store if you find your child needs something for school supplies — poster board for an upcoming project, batteries for the graphing calculator, a composition notebook. Nothing’s worse than finally getting settled for the night, only to be told you need to make a late-night trip to Wal-mart for school supplies.
- Sunday allows for an incentive or reward for kids who get their school work done early. Maybe you’ll watch a football game together afterward, or go out for ice cream or a movie. Unlike hectic weeknights, Sundays give you a chance to celebrate the hard work your child just finished by spending time together.
For some families, Sunday might not be the best day to make these things happen, due to sports schedules or church commitments. It actually doesn’t matter if you do your “Sunday work” on Saturday. What matters is that students get the time to process the past week, plan for the week ahead, get organized, and invest time in their studies.
What Sunday routines work best for your family?