With winter break fast approaching, your teen might be running a little low on motivation. But it doesn’t have to be all or nothing—studying hard or switching off completely! Below, we bring you our top 5 tips on how to support your teen with their studies this holiday season.
Let’s dive in!
- Get festive snacks ready
- Create a distraction-free work space
- Help them make a revision timetable
- Give them room to breathe
- Make sure they relax too
1. Get festive snacks ready
Revising is a real workout for the brain. Plus teen years are a time of huge growth spurts. Fuel is needed! Snacks are an excellent way to keep your child motivated and happy when they’re revising. A mix of healthy fruit, vegetables and nuts along with some naughtier festive treats like gingerbread men and cocoa, can be just what they need to keep them going.
You can even jazz up simple snacks like a banana by turning it into snowmen. Tip: cut the banana into slices. Place three slices on a skewer and use raisins for eyes and strawberries for hats. These little festive touches can make your child associate revising with good feelings of satisfaction and festive fun.
2. Create a distraction-free work space
The saying goes, ‘cluttered work space, cluttered mind’ for a reason. It’s hard to find motivation to study with random bits and bobs all over the shop. If your child’s got room for a desk, help them transform it into an inviting work space.
Set up a cork board near their desk so that they’ve got a place to post important things like their revision timetable (a great way to keep track of what’s coming up!). A desk plant is a simple way to make the study space feel welcoming and calm.
You can also make organising a fun experience with colourful folders for your teen to file away their papers. Highlight tabs with playful designs and different coloured pens for effective note-taking, are other simple ways of jazzing up revision. Colours not only add a bit of flare to otherwise drab notes, but they’re also a great way to help your teen organise (and even retain!) key info.
3. Help them make a revision timetable
Teens can be put off from revising if they don’t know where to start. And you can hardly blame them— with all the different subjects they’re taking, each with their own assessments and deadlines, it can get confusing and overwhelming to say the least. That’s what makes a revision timetable so handy!
There are different ways to go about making a revision timetable. A key thing for teens to keep in mind is to use the same planner (whether it’s an APP or physical calendar) so that all the info is in one place. You can help them mark upcoming deadlines for projects and exams in their planner and encourage them to break projects up into smaller bits. Chunking work helps make big projects feel more manageable. Have them tick every step off as they go along so that they feel a real sense of achievement.
4. Give them room to breathe
It can be easy to get carried away with helping your child as they revise. Sometimes, they just need to figure things out on their own. Making mistakes is actually a part of the learning process. Of course, we’re not saying abandon them—far from it! But giving your teen some breathing room to work on their studies (while checking in from time to time) is actually more beneficial to them in the long run as they become resilient learners.
5. Make sure they relax too
Down time is not only important to your teen’s wellbeing, but it actually helps them with their learning. Looking away from a problem and returning to it a bit later can help bring about creative solutions. Surprisingly (and conveniently!) when your mind is at rest, it’s still busy working things out. So give your teen plenty of chances to switch off. Get a bowl of popcorn ready and watch some family festive films together.
As different countdowns begin—to Christmas, New Year, mocks— we hope our tips help you make the most of your family time this holiday. With any luck, your teen will be going into the New Year feeling confident about their studies and raring to start spring term.