Keeping a Preschool Child’s Attention & Teaching Them
Many parents and teachers have questions about how to teach children, how to get them to stay focused or to concentrate on learning activities while being taught in the preschool classroom or while learning at home.
There are some simple things that can be done to help to improve on keeping a preschool child’s attention when teaching at home or in the preschool classroom.
We answer a similar email question below and have placed it as a preschool article on our website for teachers and parents to benefit.
Question from Visitor (email) About Keeping a Child’s Attention:
“I need some way to keep my 2 yr. old’s attention and actually teach him things.”
Our Reply:
Hello and thank you for contacting us at Preschool Learning Online.
If you are looking for preschool activities that will help your child concentrate and also develop these skills more fully here are some tips that will help.
First of all, observe your child when he is just at regular play.
What sorts of things is he interested in?
- Outdoors
- bugs
- trains
- art type activities etc?
Whatever he is interested is what you want to focus on because that is what will spark his interest.
Let’s say that you observed him playing for a day and you noticed that he was really interested in bugs.
What you would want to do then is go to a dollar store or just any store you know has great prices and look for a variety of plastic bugs to play with, age appropriate picture books with bugs, little bug collecting kits etc.
Then I would get a basket and put SOME of the items in it and set it out for him to play with. Give him the basket and let him be free with it, don’t tell him what to do with the toys and watch his imagination grow.
He will be concentrating on a specific activity for a certain length of time and not even know it.
A lot of times we wonder why children can sometimes seem restless or just spend a short time at one activity and get bored really easy. We as adults need to make sure we are observing the things that interest them and follow through.
It may be a little bit of extra effort on our part but the rewards your child will reap will last a lifetime, and your son will be learning through play. You can help him focus on the different colors of bugs he has, count them, put them in a row or a pattern, etc.
All of these things added to play will help him as he grows and gets ready for elementary school.
I hope you have found this information helpful and please feel free to e mail me back with any other questions that you may have.
© Marisa Robinson (R.E.C.E.) Preschool Learning Online
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