Staying Focused and Keeping the Sillies Away
If you have more than one child doing school in the same room, it can be so easy for the kids to lose their focus. Someone makes a rude noise, and suddenly everyone is giggling and it takes 5 minutes to get back on task. Then someone talks to his brother about the Lego ship he built, and someone else talks about her soccer game last night and everyone forgets the math problems they were working on…. A friend shared with me how she trains her children to stay focused and I thought it was genius. She has hooks on her fireplace for stockings at Christmas, but for the rest of the year she uses them for training. She hangs 3 rings on each child’s hook at the start of each day. During schoolwork time, if a child distracts the group they have to go take a ring off their hook. Rings that are still on the hook at the end of the day are used to buy their reward. The reward may vary – small pieces of candy, TV time, etc.
What do you think? Good idea? How do you keep your kids on task?
