Child concentration

Did you know that reading bedtime stories is a great concentration exercise for your child? Focusing attention on a story and reading fairy tales stimulates a child’s brain.

Children above the age of 3 are more likely to develop skills in focusing their attention. It is as a result of their brain developing and the improvement of cognitive functions such as memory, attention, and concentration, to which they can maintain their attention for more than 15 minutes.

Children, aged 4 and 5 can focus on playing and focus on an activity for a maximum of 20 minutes.

The activities for 6-year-olds can last much longer and often up to an hour. Keep in mind that there are large individual differences in everyone’s ability to concentrate.

The child’s concentration is influenced by the child’s environment and the presence of distracting factors, such as: noise, different environments, anxiety, the presence of people whom the child does not like or is afraid of, genetic condition, bad family situation, improper diet – a diet based on lots of sugars contained in sweets or sweet drinks activates the brain structures related to emotions and therefore reduces the child’s ability to concentrate.

Exercises for concentrating:

• Clapping – the adult reads a fairy tale to the child; the child has to clap when the agreed word appears.
• Drawing – we draw simple drawings on the child’s back, for example, a triangle, a sun, a cloud – the task is to guess what has been drawn on the back and draw these pictures on a piece of paper.
• Listening – the adult reads a short fairy tale to the child, then the child will explain the main plot line or answers the adult’s questions relating to the fairy tale.
• Laying down – draw your child’s favourite animal on a large piece of hard paper or cardboard and colour the picture together with your child. Then cut it into larger pieces first and let your child put them together like a puzzle. When your child gains experience in matching the whole picture, cut the pieces into smaller pieces and let the child arrange them again.