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Staying focused issues and Handicraft question


shernandez
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My oldest (6-year-old girl) has a hard time paying attention to her own school work. She is too interested in what the three younger children are doing. Even if the second child is doing school work at the table, she would rather watch her than do her own work. We have a relatively small space, so separating them is not really feasible. And, it is hard to keep a 2-year-old and a 7-month-old out of the room you are in (unless they are sleeping). I thought about teaching during nap time, but she still naps and I do not want to take that away just yet. Any suggestions???

 

Second question...I found these really cute AG sewing kits at our craft store, and was going to incorporate them into our next session. Has anybody taught a four-year-old to sew before? It looks easy (holes already made, etc.), but we have never tried anything like it before.

 

Thanks for the help!

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My 5 year old ds is this way. Schooling during nap time isn't even an option at our house because my 2 year old no longer naps and my 5 year old does still nap :glare: how did that happen?

 

I haven't really found any magical solution, but I have found a couple of things that help. One thing is to make it seem like we are all doing something together...so if he is working with the c-rods, or whatever math manipulative, my 2 year old plays with them as we'll. so even though she is not doing "math" she is doing the "same" thing as him. If he is reading to me, my 2 year old either sits with a book and looks at the pictures, or she listens to him read to us both. If he is doing handwriting practice, my 2 year old scribbles on a paper at the table next to him. And of course she paints, and does all art stuff with us. Stuff like that.

 

Also, I try to include a lot of moving around into what we do so that we can all do it together. For example, to skip count we jump along a giant number line and the 2 year old jumps with up, or to spell words we jump on the bed while we spell and the little one jumps too.

 

It is definitely tough, and I only have one little one, so I feel for you. I hope you get lots of helpful suggestions.

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My dd7 has the same problem. But it was much worse last year when she was 6yo. A year has done so much to help her focus issues. One thing that I did last year with spelling, where we had the worst issues was give her a pile of mini-M&M's when she started to talk or play with something, I ate one. When she was done with her work, she got to eat what was left. I know, it sounds horrible, but she actually loved this game. I think it was a fun way to quietly point out where she needed to improve, and I wasn't having to constantly remind her verbally.

 

I also made sure we had really short lessons, and anything I had that took more than 10-15 minutes, we broke up into more than one lesson.

 

I have also discovered that getting enough sleep is very important. I thought that dd would naturally fall asleep at night if she was tired, and if she wasn't falling asleep, she wasn't tired. But I discovered quite by accident that she wasn't getting enough sleep and when she did get enough sleep, her ability to focus greatly improved.

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