3 Tips on How To Increase Kids Attention Span — Part 1
Hey there! If you are reading this, that means that either your kids or someone you know want to increase kids’ attention span to improve their academics or just teach them to get things done.
Here are three tips on understanding and helping them to get better at focusing and knowing how to manage their attention span to get things done.
Set a Timer
If your kid has an issue focusing on something for some time, it’s okay, you’re not alone. It’s a common issue among kids. Hence to ensure cost-efficient, it is encouraged for parents to understand their kid’s attention span before moving forward in enrolling them in various tuition centres or any other tutor or activity
Each kid is different in their ways, we just have to find the works best for them.
One way to manage can be breaking down each task. For example, start recording the moment they do a task and stop recording when they start to lose focus. Check the recorded time, it can be 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or even an hour. Each kid is different, so don’t worry too much.
Now that you know the time they can focus on something, try putting each task around that time. For example, do task A for 5 mins, followed by a short break. Repeat this cycle, and slowly improve the time to 6 min, 7 min, 8 min, so on and so forth.
Play Focus Games
Another way that could help improve their focus is to play focus games. Here are 3 types of games you could play with your kids.
- Memory Game
Memory games require high concentration to memorize which will help to improve their memory and also concentration if they keep practicing.
Pick something that they love, and engage them to remember, you could go one step further to give them incentive when they remember the number of items or numbers.
For example, telling them these 5, 20,50,88,21. Next, have them say it out in the same sequence and order of the numbers. if they can say all of it correctly, reward them with a sweet or something.
Spot The Difference
This game ‘spot the difference’ also requires high mental power and concentration to get it.
Click HERE to spot the difference for kids:
Spot the difference allows kids to maintain high focus while training them to be meticulous at the things that they are doing. This would work very well with some academics such as math where require high concentration to understand the question flow and to ensure all numbers that were brought forward were calculated or executed correctly. Having such engaging games like Spot the difference would enhance the focus level of the kids which will help in their upbringing.
Tongue Twisters
This is one of my favorite games as kids can impress their friends, and it also requires focus to get it right.
Here are three examples of tongue twisters
- She sells seashells by the seashore.
- How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
- Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper. How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?
In the end, knowing what works and what don’t
To improve, we have to understand what works and what doesn’t. Yes or yes?
All these activities we suggested, may work for many while it might not work for the rest.
What’s important is writing down what works and what does not works, so that you can refer to and understand what are the common things that work and progress from there.
Now that you have discovered a list of things that work, you can focus on that to help them improve. Don’t be afraid to try new ways or methods to help them improve, record them down too.