Help Your Children Focus with these 5 tips!
Homeschooling can be such a rewarding experience for both you and your child. However, it can also be challenging to keep your child focused throughout the day. There are many distractions fighting for their attention. Hopefully, by the end of this blog post, you’ll feel better equipped to help your children focus on the task at hand.
How to Know if My Child Struggles with Focus
If you notice that your child is taking a very long time with a particular topic BUT it is not due to them not knowing the content, there is a high probability that they are simply not focused at the moment. An important thing to mention is that children’s attention span is only about 2-3 minutes per their age. For example, a 5-year-old might only focus for 10 minutes. Obviously, every child is different, and this is just an average; however, it still brings up the point that we should keep in mind how long we are asking to keep our children focused.
Here are 5 ways to help your children focus and stay on track with their homeschool day.
- Use a Fidget Spinner or a Stress Ball
There are different studies that show the benefits of using a fidget spinner. They range from helping your child avoid moving around to helping them focus by occupying the area of the brain that gets distracted by random thoughts. No matter which way you think about a fidget spinner, you can use it to help your child refocus.
There are two ideal scenarios for using these tools. Either you have a child that needs to have their hands busy to focus, in which case you can give them the stress ball or the fidget spinner WHILE they’re doing their schoolwork. Or you can decide to have your child take a break for a few minutes and use these gadgets.
You will know what works best with your child.
- Include Movement to Improve Their Focus
Another option is to incorporate movement or brain breaks into your homeschooling day. This could involve taking short breaks throughout the day for brain breaks and exercise. Think of this as recess during homeschooling. You can also design your lessons to incorporate movement for your child. For example, if your child is learning sight words, you can write the words on different pieces of paper, place them around the room, and have the child move around the room to read each word.
If you’d like other ideas to include movement in your homeschool day, I suggest reading this blog post to find ways to make homeschool fun with movement.
- Use Sounds or Headphones
Another way to help your child focus is to use sounds or music. Some children find that white noise or music can help them concentrate. Whether they’re looking to drown out background noise or the soothing sounds help them focus, your child will benefit greatly from hearing white noise or music.
Some children also like to wear headphones to hear the sounds or music, while others just need noise-cancelling headphones to block disruptive sounds. For example, my son always has his headphones on. Sometimes there’s music, and sometimes he’s just trying to block out his younger sister 😄.
- Focus on Nutrition to Help with Focus
The fourth strategy is to make sure your children are well-nourished and hydrated. I know when I’m hungry, I can’t focus. Children aren’t excluded from this. Food gives our bodies the energy we need to function well. We want to make sure that our children have a nutritious breakfast and healthy snacks throughout the day. This will help them have the energy to stay focused throughout the day.
This also applies to making sure that our children are properly hydrated. I did an in-depth blog post on how drinking enough water throughout the day will improve your child’s focus. You can view it here.
I personally don’t like drinking water and ONLY drink it because I know of the benefits. That’s not going to fly with our children. Hopefully, the tips shared in this previous blog post will help make the process a little more fun and enjoyable for your child.
Overall, we should try to provide our children with healthy foods that will help their brains function optimally. And let’s not forget hydration. You can use the water tracker found here to track and monitor their water intake.
- Switch It Up! Get Outside to Help with Focus
The fifth strategy is to switch things up a bit. You might need to change the day-to-day a little bit. It could be that your child is simply bored with their homeschooling routine.
You can decide to bring the schoolwork outside. I’m not an outdoorsy person, so I’m not going to suggest grabbing a blanket and sitting on the grass… BUT you could sit on a bench 😄. You can go for a walk while discussing the topic they’re learning for the day.
You can also change the time of day when you start and finish homeschooling. Some children are more alert in the early morning hours, while others can concentrate more in the evening. Adjusting your schedule based on what works for your family is one of the biggest benefits of homeschooling.
- BONUS: Does Sleep Impact My Child’s Focus?
Children need a certain amount of sleep at night to enhance their memory, concentration, problem-solving abilities, and overall brain function. Depending on the age of your child, they might need between 8-13 hours of sleep. If your child has difficulty sleeping, there are certain things you can do to help improve their sleep quality. For example, you can put on some brown noise or make the room a little cooler.
Thinking about your child’s sleep habits and ensuring they are well-rested will significantly impact their ability to complete the schoolwork that we have planned for them. For example, if your child had a rough night, it might not be the ideal time to tackle a math situational problem.
By following these tips, you can help your children stay focused and on track with their homeschooling day. Children are naturally good at focusing on things that interest them. We need to find ways to make homeschooling topics more interesting for our children. Movement is something that will help get your children focused again. You can find ideas on integrating movement into your homeschooling day in this blog post.
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Check out the entire video to help your child refocus on their homeschool day.
The topics covered in this video are:
0:33 How to know if my child struggles with focus
1:25 Use a Fidget Spinner or a Stress Ball
2:17 Include Movement to Improve their Focus
3:39 Use Sounds or Headphones
4:49 Focus on Nutrition to help with focus
6:27 Switch it Up! Get Outside to help with focus
7:45 Schedule your Homeschool Day based on your child’s needs
8:28 Does Sleep Impact my child’s focus
9:42 How focus can impact our homeschool child
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Links mentioned in this video:
- https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/can-listening-white-noise-help-you-focus
- https://www.noisli.com/blog/what-is-white-noise-and-why-is-it-so-powerful/
- Improve your child’s focus with this one simple habit
- Easy Tips to Drink More Water
- Make Homeschool Fun Through Movement
- Water Intake Tracker
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