Hi every one. Guess what, I am taking a blogging class at Ilisgvik. I am really excited about it. We are learning how to make our blog appeal to more people and get more readers. One thing I have decided to do to accomplish this goal is to have weekly post for people to look for. My first one is on Mondays. I will post an activity for you to try with your kids to help keep them entertained, engaged in learning, and also to learn how to focus.
I read in the article:
Children can be taught how to cut through the culture of distraction.
July 29, 2008 - by Maggie Jackso
"Two-thirds of children under six live in homes that keep the TV on half or more of the time, an environment linked to attentional difficulties. Mothers multitask an average of 80 hours a week, up from 40 hours in 1975. Racing from activity to activity, families have little time to sit down to eat, to converse, or to be in the same room. They have no time to be together in the deepest sense of the word."
Jackso goes on to quote Ellen Galinky, president of the Families and Work Institute who said,
“We all live in an overwhelming, overstimulating, information-overloaded world,” says Galinsky. “And unless you can pay attention, you can’t think, you can’t problem-solve, you can’t learn. It’s an underlying skill that is to me front and center to success at work, and at home.”
In an article entitled "
How to teach your child the importance of concentration"
by Nan Keltie she says:
"Since toddlers are often distracted and on the go, this stage is probably the most important of all in the training process. Your child's natural curiosity is a valuable tool, so use it. Toddlers love to play, and you can train them while doing something fun."
By doing focused activities with your young children even once or twice a day you can help improve their ability to focus which will later help them do well in school, be more successful at work and have more meaningful relationships.
Here is my first Monday activity. This is a silly little game but Chalyse really enjoys it and she is really starting to recognize her letters.
You will need each of the letters of the alphabet that are easy to handle and see from any side as they will be tossed around. We bought some big foam letters at Target. They can be found by the bath toys in the baby section. When we moved to Utah for the summer we left our letters in Alaska so we took 26 of the clear rectangular lids that come on Gerber baby food and wrote on them with permanent marker. Both worked well.
We then put all the letters into a big mixing bowl. Usually we talk about each letter as we put it in the bowl. We may line them up in order first.
Then comes the fun part. We mix all the letters up, using our hands or a big spoon. We sing, "Alphabet soup, alphabet soup, we love alphabet soup." or something like that.
We are not careful to keep all the letters in the bowl :). As the letters fly out of the bowl we name them and talk about them.
Chalyse enjoys being able to make a mess and I love that she is starting to recognize most of her letters. As she gets older we will begin to talk more about the sounds each letter make and start to make words with them.
