How to work with children with low attention span

[jedamum]

so if giving fish oil daily, can also give cod liver oil?


i just started enforcing daily seat work for ds2. he can yawn 4x in 5min for doing 1 sheet of colouring! so poor thing. i don't remember starting ds1 seatwork so young (ie <3yo); i think i started him at 3.5yo, and he didn't like colouring too...even now, his artwork is terrible.

after reading bud's recommendation on 'wipe clean mat', i bought some wipe clean books and are getting better results as he prefers to scribble using marker pens than colour pencils. problem now is that i can only find limited varieties of such books and they don't come cheap.

[schellen]

jedamum:

so if giving fish oil daily, can also give cod liver oil?

The fish oil is the DHA kind. Yes, DD takes both together but her cod liver oil is in a gel-like capsule that she swallows. It beats having to spoonfeed her the awful liquid version. I can't remember exactly when she learned to swallow pills and capsules, maybe 5+ or 6?

DD started seatwork from 2+ or 3yo. She enjoyed pasting and colouring and scribbling and doodling. I guess it depends on the child's personality. As you already know, for the same piece of work, DD will take the effort to write/colour properly while your DS1 just makes sure that the work is done correctly in minimal time. Right?

[jedamum]

schellen:

The fish oil is the DHA kind. Yes, DD takes both together

oic. thanks.

schellen:

As you already know, for the same piece of work, DD will take the effort to write/colour properly while your DS1 just makes sure that the work is done correctly in minimal time. Right?

although i recognise that colouring is part of exercising the finger muscle for future better handwriting, seems like ds2 is walking in ds1's footsteps in disliking colouring; just today, less than a minute into colouring, can see him yawning :faint: ....and couldn't finish the colouring work as usual.

[tamarind]

jedamum,

My younger boy also disliked coloring.

I got him the Kumon maze books and he loves them ! I bought them from Popular bookshop.

Mazes are much better than coloring, because kids need to use their brain to figure out how to get out of the maze, and at the same time they practice how to hold the pencil and draw the line so that it does not get out of the path. This is great for developing pre-writing skills.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51q%2BvLTIZ3L._SL160_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-dp,TopRight,12,-18_SH30_OU01_AA115_.jpg\">

I actually did not let him practice writing everyday because I did not have the time and patience. But after 4 years old his writing is fine. It is not necessary to make the child do coloring

[jedamum]

thanks tamarind,

i will check the book out. cos i had previously got my boy a simple maze book (with 64 mazes) and he finished it in a few days; was wondering if there are any wipeclean type of maze books for young kids....maybe i'll get the kumon one (which is not cheap) and laminate them so that can reuse.

[Blessedmum]

My son cannot sit still too… as if backside got needles. It’s already a chore to ask him to sit down to do his work. He can stand on one leg and do, then switch to the other. When I remind him to sit down properly, he will sit…but only for a while. or that he will sit at one small corner of the seat and start rocking. I signed him at at Kumon hoping that he can learn to complete his work within one seating and at a short time… yet to see improvement. Somemore next year P1 already. My daughter is a dreamer… teacher told me that she will sit there and then drift away in her own world… and very blur. She is able to sit down to do her work. Problem is, sometimes she took too long. She needs constant reminder. Haiz… anyone has magic wand?

[tamarind]

atutor2001:

When kids are very active they may have very mild ADHD. Usually such kids are more intelligent than others. Their patience needs to be \"nurtured\" through extra effort from a very young age.

Most parents think that it is normal for small children to be inattentive and with short attention span. However, if we study the profile of a top gifted kid (not genius - they are in a different category - genius and lunatics are separated by only a very fine line), usually we will be looking at a child who can stay focus for a longer time than others. In fact one of the greatest gift of a gifted kid is the ability to stay focus at a young age no matter whether the subject is of interest to him or her i.e. they listen and digest.

Educators are clever. To overcome a child's short attention span, methods such as \"flash card\" was invented. However, if the kid is indeed with mild ADHD then we will be reinforcing his short attention span with the use of such method. Therefore, for such kids, a necessary approach may be to spend effort in teaching him/her to stay still for a longer period of time, regardless whether he/she has finished the work (a social life skill)

We believe that children will grow out of this when they are older. True, when they are older, most will learn to keep still when the occasion requires. However, mentally, they are very impatient and have lost the ability to \"listen\" and empathise. Sometimes we call them \"elitist\". However, I think it is the way the child was brought up that created such mental state.

I read the above from another thread, and I find that it is very suitable for this thread. atutor2001, hope you don't mind that I copy and paste here.

I think the point of the flash card is very good. I also use word cards when teaching my son :
http://tamarindphonics.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-to-teach-phonics.html

But I don't \"flash\" the cards. Instead, my son is given the cards to play with, he can look at the cards for as long as he wants, and he has to think about how to arrange the cards in the correct order. This method works very well for him and the results are amazing.

I also agree that it is necessary to train a child to stay still and learn for a longer period of time.

Most parents try to make learning as fun as possible for their kids. So when kids refuse to read certain books, parents just give up.

It is perfectly fine for kids from as young as 3 years old, to have 5 minutes of \"serious studying\" every day. When my boy was that age, his attention span was only about 2 - 3 mins. After more than 1 year of consistent learning, he is able to read for about 5 - 10 mins when he turns 5 years old this year. I consider that a big improvement for him. That short amount of learning time is actually more than enough for him.

His PCF teacher called me yesterday to tell me that he does not pay attention in class. I spoke to her personally this morning. She told me that although my boy is always very dreamy, he has no problem doing his work in class. Sometimes I wonder whether we are asking too much from 5 year old kids ? Is it realistic to expect them to be able to sit still for 1 to 2 hours studying ?

[jedamum]

RE Seatwork


my 3yo boy is finally able to sit for 15min going through his tracing (thank goodness for WIPE-CLEAN books! else i’ll go broke!). but he tends to only select pages that interests him and skip some repetitve (concepts, but different pics etc) pages that follows after a few similar pages.
how to sustain his interest?
i had printed pages of online activities for him, he goes for the mazes, tracing of letters and numbers (which he only traces the large letters/digits that appear on each page without touching the smaller repetitive ones on the same page), 1-2 pages of counting activities (thereafter he gets bored), matching, dot-to-dots.
should i let him choose his own activities or insist that he finished the allocated activities?
he keep asking for the same activities until they are all completed thereafter he rejects other printouts that he had rejected earlier. should i have stopped the seatwork earlier before he runs out of the day’s work instead of waiting til i have nothing left for him to do and he rejects the printout that he reject earlier??

[tamarind]

jedamum:

RE Seatwork


my 3yo boy is finally able to sit for 15min going through his tracing (thank goodness for WIPE-CLEAN books! else i'll go broke!). but he tends to only select pages that interests him and skip some repetitve (concepts, but different pics etc) pages that follows after a few similar pages.
how to sustain his interest?
i had printed pages of online activities for him, he goes for the mazes, tracing of letters and numbers (which he only traces the large letters/digits that appear on each page without touching the smaller repetitive ones on the same page), 1-2 pages of counting activities (thereafter he gets bored), matching, dot-to-dots.
should i let him choose his own activities or insist that he finished the allocated activities?
he keep asking for the same activities until they are all completed thereafter he rejects other printouts that he had rejected earlier. should i have stopped the seatwork earlier before he runs out of the day's work instead of waiting til i have nothing left for him to do and he rejects the printout that he reject earlier??

jedamum,
When my son was 3 years old, I did not have enough time and effort to make him do seat work everyday. He finished the Kumon Maze books very quickly. I just make sure that he has lots of paper and pencil, and he is free to write and draw anything he likes at any time. Now when he has an \"inspiration\", he can actually sit for up to an hour drawing and writing his stories. He only does worksheets from his kindergarten or his Berries class and he always completes in less than 5 mins. So I still don't know how long he can sit and write serious work.

[quote]I signed him at at Kumon hoping that he can learn to complete his work within one seating and at a short time... yet to see improvement.[/quote]My boy only likes the Kumon Maze books. I also bought Kumon Maths workbooks for him to do. He did a few pages, over a couple of weeks. When I asked him to do a new page, he cried. So I stopped letting him do the Kumon Maths books. Kumon worksheets are very repetitive. Kids with low attention span may feel tortured when doing these worksheets.

Instead I used a method that suits him better :
http://tamarindvillage.blogspot.com/2009/06/learning-maths.html

He loves the colourful cards and the counting of different objects.

Now, he is able to add and subtract quite well, still using the colourful cards, but he does not need objects any more. Most importantly, he is happy doing maths

[jedamum]

would like to bump up this old thread.


my then-3yo-now-going-5 has improved a lot in concentration level since my last post 2 years back.

while he still has 'needles on his backside' when required to do seatwork, during that timespan that he is attentive, he is able to complete given work at satisfactory levels (i have to accept that he only manages to have half his butt on the chair while doing his work ). and because he can complete his work fast (with minimal/no mistakes), on-and-off, i hear him telling me that he either get (1) rope in by teachers to help weaker students (2) secretly telling his friend the answer to the questions (3) get punished by running around the class/being noisy when others are still doing their work :faint: