How to develop attentiveness in a child 6-8 years old?

As kids get older and begin to learn more about the world around them, being attentive is a crucial skill. For children ages six to eight, learning to focus can help them do better academically and handle everyday responsibilities more effectively. Children are naturally curious at this age, but they might require assistance to stay focused.

Promoting focus doesn’t have to be challenging. Easy games, easy activities, and minor routine changes can have a significant impact. Parents are able to assist their children in developing this critical ability by providing an environment that encourages focus.

We’ll look at doable strategies in this post to help kids become more attentive while also making the process fun and interesting for parents and kids.

Features of classes

1. Regularity. Classes should be carried out systematically, highlighting for them a minimum of 2-3 times a week. This will provide a much better result than periodic games without any organization.
2. Duration. Since children cannot concentrate on one thing for a long time, all educational games should be short. Remember that at the age of 6-7, a child can do a certain activity without losing interest in it for no longer than 30-40 minutes.
3. Sequence. You should start training your attention with simple tasks, and then gradually set more complex tasks. At the same time, be sure to make sure that the child understands the rules of the game and what exactly is required of him.

It is also necessary to consider the characteristics that set attention apart. The child may struggle to focus if he is disorganized and absent-minded.

The baby is not paying enough attention if they are unable to classify and generalize objects.

Sustained effort on a particular task is referred to as perseverance, and switching and distributing attention is the capacity to monitor multiple things at once. Sometimes only one of these qualities needs to be corrected, leaving the others undisturbed. This influences the exercises and tasks selected for a specific child.

Types of games

The following broad categories can be used to categorize all playful attention-developing activities:

• Games with paper aids. They are very popular and involve the use of pre-prepared sheets, notebooks, books, magazines and other printed aids with bright pictures, letters, numbers. Such games are very diverse, they concentrate attention well and prepare for school.

• Games with words. An example of such a game can be “Edible-inedible”, when an adult throws a ball and names products mixed with inedible objects, and the child must be attentive and catch the ball only in response to “edible”. The second example – the child must name objects by some specific feature, for example, only green or only wooden. The third example is when a child needs to be told a story or sung a song, and an adult will distract him in different ways at this time. Such games additionally stimulate speech and imagination.

• Active games with physical exercises. Kids like them and are especially interesting if several children participate at once. The leader should demonstrate some exercise or movement, and everyone else should repeat after him. In such games, you can use “forbidden” movements (not repeating a certain exercise), memorizing several movements in a row and other tasks.

• Board games. Playing dominoes, sea battle, checkers, lotto, tic-tac-toe and other exciting games with your child, you can develop not only attention, but also thinking, logic, memory and other brain functions.

Providing a nurturing atmosphere in which fun and stimulating activities encourage natural focus growth is key to assisting a child between the ages of 6 and 8 in developing attentiveness. Easy routines, focus-demanding games, and promoting mindfulness can have a significant impact. It’s critical to exercise patience and understand that developing attention spans requires effort and repetition.

Exercises for developing selective attention

Even at the ages of six, seven, and eight, you can practice attentiveness with a variety of engaging activities. Among them are:

• Finding the same. The child is given a sheet of paper with many similar images. But only two of them match in all details. After examining each picture, the child must find the same pictures.

• Finding differences. The child is given two pictures that have similar images, but they have a number of differences. The task is to find all the differences.

• Finding pairs. The given sheet of paper contains many pictures, most of which have a pair (drawn twice). However, there are also two images that do not have a pair. It is these that need to be found by concentrating your attention.

• Passing a labyrinth. The child is given a picture of a labyrinth through which he must “guide” an animal, a cartoon character, or a car. This exercise helps develop not only attentiveness, but also spatial thinking.

• Separating images. On the proposed sheet, the child sees several contours of images overlapping each other. For the smallest, each contour is made in a separate color to make it easier to find individual images.

• Drawing on the model. A good training of attention is the repetition of the pattern according to the model, when there is already a finished image in one window, and in the second – only its outline in the form of points. The task of the same type is the continuation of a certain pattern.

• Highlighting groups of objects. Such training perfectly stimulates the selectivity of attention. On the sheet that the child is given, usually many different objects are depicted, which should be divided into groups, taking into account common features. For example, it is necessary to circle transport, vegetables, mushrooms or musical instruments with separate lines.

Youngsters who are proficient with numbers can be invited to use Schultte tables. The numbers on these signs are placed at random, so the child will have to quickly shift their focus in order to figure out where everything is.

Since the table typically has 25 cells (5 x 5) there are 25 numbers "hidden" in it. There are, however, additional sizes available, ranging from 256 (16×16) to 9 elements (3×3).

Furthermore, there are letter tables where you have to look up letters in alphabetical order.

There are also Gorbov-Schulte tables, which are different in color from the standard ones. They use black and red for the numbers and background, respectively.

The letter version of Schulte tables is used in the study of speed reading, and its use not only improves attentiveness but also oral counting, memory, and peripheral vision. Younger students also like working with text; they might like to cross out every instance of the letters "a," "o," or "m." Additionally, you have the option to count or underline specific letters within a text passage.

A child’s overall development includes assisting in the development of attentiveness. Simple games and puzzles like memory aids can add fun and efficiency to this process.

Developing a schedule and promoting concentration while performing daily tasks also enhances their capacity for concentration. Since improvement could take some time, it’s critical to exercise patience and offer encouraging feedback.

Your child will benefit in school and in daily life if you help them develop their attention skills by providing engaging activities and a supportive environment.

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