Improving Concentration: Teach Your Kids Fun Concentration Techniques

From math homework, to swim team practice, to crossing a street alone; improving concentration in your children is a key element to success no matter what the activity.


Children can learn concentration techniques and develop a strong attention span from many non-academic activities.

These skills will then serve your child well when she does her math homework every night or while she takes her SAT exams, for example.

Power of Concentration: Prerequisite for Academic Development
Strengthening the power of concentration is highly important for academic success. Without the ability to concentrate, students will take longer to complete academic tasks or assignments.

As parents of elementary age children know, from getting dressed in the morning, to finishing her homework, once there is a loss of concentration or your daughter gets distracted, it can be rough trying to get her back on task.

Take solving a long division math problem, a task that requires many steps to complete. When there is a loss of concentration in the middle of solving the problem, that is when a careless mistake can occur.

The same applies all the more in high school math problems that can take many steps to complete. When a teen is trying to work out a triangle proof for his geometry class, he might have to go back several steps in the problem in order to remember how he wanted to solve it. On a timed test like the SAT’s or AP exams, a loss of concentration can mean losing precious minutes to complete and check your work.

Concentration Exercises and Games for the Home
For parents looking to develop a longer attention span and improving concentration skills, there are numerous ways to achieve this goal. Your concentration exercises do not have to be academic at all. Focus your time on activities that requires attention to detail in many steps.

Be sure to start with activities you know your child can complete and gradually make the activity harder by adding extra steps. Look at my list of activities below for ideas:

• Memory game (start with only 10 cards, then move on to 12, 14, 16, etc…)
• Dot to dot (start with up to ten dots, then 20, etc.)
• Constructing train sets and tracks Children develop concentration as they pay attention to connecting track pieces correctly, plus they'll gain other important preschool math skills.
• Puzzles – Start with 24 piece, 48 piece, etc.
• Lacing Cards Be sure to vary the lacing patterns. (Here are some lacing card choices that I thought looked fun!)
• Bead Stringing (first add more beads, then work on making bead color patterns read, yellow, blue, green, repeat 5 or six times)
• Listen to audiobooks this requires waaaaay more attention than just gawking at a TV screen. On TV, images and sounds change at 5-10 second intervals to keep the viewer attentive. On an audiobook, the child has to learn to sit quietly and attentively to hear all the details of the story.
• Read aloud to your own children! Hearing one's own mom or dad read, for gradually increasing lengths of time, is a great way for young children to develop concentration skills.

Try These Activities for Improving Concentration in your Elementary-Age Child:

Many of these activities will require you, the parent to demonstrate the skill or technique (perhaps several times) being used before your child can attempt it. Be prepared to spend time with your child teaching these activities, and you will see soon see your child’s power of concentration strengthen.

• Chapter books (age appropriate) Start with shorter books and move on to longer ones.
• Raking leaves into piles Designate a small area for your child to rake into one pile. Increase the area she rakes and the number of leaf-piles to make.
• Building toys: K’nex, Lego, Erector Set: These toys come with instructions for building easier to harder constructions. My own elementary-age children really enjoy constructing Lego and K'nex sets. They get tremendous personal satisfaction from the the competence they feel upon successfully completing a Knex or Lego creation. These sets are great for children that need more fine motor development, as well.

  Once a child “gets” how to make an easy K’nex construction, they will want to go on to the harder ones. The more complicated the construction, the more concentration it will take to read the instructive diagram and finish all steps required. Here are some sets, many with Free Shipping, from Amazon.com

• Learning sports skills through “clinics” or small group coaching A child who is a tennis or baseball lover might enjoy focusing on step-by-step athletic skills development, (i.e. pitching, tennis serves, etc.)
• Frosting a cake Start with just showing how to spread frosting in nice even strokes. Move on to piping icing or other cake decoration ideas, too.
• Sewing and needle-threading, crocheting, cross-stitching Thread large-eyed needles first, then smaller needles. Draw dotted lines on a piece of scrap fabric for your child to stitch on when she’s first learning how, then move on to real sewing, stitching or crocheting projects.

Try These Activities for Improving Concentration Skills in your Middle School/High School Age Kids:

• School Sports Teams or Local Club Sports A good coach will help a child focus on mastery of one skill at a time before combining skills. Your child will benefit from the demands of paying attention to his swimming strokes or football passing skills.
• Jewelry Making Following jewelry design patterns and explanations for closing the wires off are great concentration exercises. Here are some great, inexpensive jewelry making books and starter sets. (Many qualify for Free Shipping, too!)
• Painting A painting class can force your child to concentrate on hand-eye coordination to paint a still life and pay close attention to his brush strokes.
• Concentration Meditation! A teen yoga class will help your child learn to concentrate on her own body… her breathing, her muscle groups and even her own thought processes.
• Making bread dough by hand This is a wonderful parent-child activity. Making a real bread dough from scratch requires following many steps in a certain order and time frame. Kneading dough by hand also forces the baker to concentrate on how the dough feels… too sticky, not malleable enough, etc. Try harder dough recipes like sourdough or focaccia bread.

Concentration-Improving Skills Can Be Tailored To Your Child
Know Your Child If your child is a natural athlete, don’t force her to try cross stitching to concentration. Sign her up for a good sports-skills development program. If your son has an interest in art, then help him get started on mastering his painting brush strokes.

Limit TV and video games. These are by nature attention reducers as there is a constant change in focus and activity in a TV show, movie or video game. If your child has a weak attention span, make sure she does more activities for improving concentration and fewer hours watching TV.

Encourage finishing tasks to completion. Teach your children to finishing a chapter rather than putting a book down mid sentence or to finish a section of crocheting before putting her scarf away. Seeing a task through to completion is an important step in improving concentration and can help develop a longer attention span.

Try to limit multitasking. Kids love to talk on their cell phones, Instant Message on the computer and do their Algebra homework all at the same time. Make sure homework time is a focused-thinking activity and save the texting and phone chatting for after school work is completed.

Discourage interruptions. If you see your child is concentrating on making his erector-set helicopter, don’t interrupt him to ask him what he wants for dinner. Make it a household rule that we don’t interrupt when someone is working or concentrating.

With these ideas in hand, you will soon see improved concentration in your child (and maybe even yourself.) Choose activities that you will enjoy doing with your child and have fun improving concentration together.

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