Our Super Power Word for October is Stamina. We’ll be teaching the little ones that stamina is when you have the strength to focus and keep working even when things are hard. You can help your children develop stamina at home by encouraging them to keep trying, training your child to be more focused, and by not showing frustration when things get tough.
For a child who finds it hard to focus because of fidgeting, try doing tasks while the child is standing at a counter or sitting in a chair that allows them to gently spin back and forth. Some of our teachers use disc chairs or wobble chairs to help our children focus while being able to fidget (and not disrupt classmates).
You can also train your child to focus by rewarding stamina. Use a timer and ask your child to work on a task for as long as he can. How long was it? That’s your baseline. Give your child a ten-minute break—moving around, not screentime—and then try to increase the focus time by 30-second to a minute. Work on this every day and you should see an improvement in your child’s ability to stay on task. You can also break large projects into much smaller tasks. Instead of “Read for 20 Minutes a Day,” try “Read for 5 Minutes” four times a day. Set an attainable goal and a reward for when that goal is reached.