Keeping their attention

Jan. 4, 2006 - Keeping their attention

I have the HARDEST time getting my 7 year to pay attention, and not get distracted when trying to do school work with him.  It is a daily battle with him.  I can have my 6 and 4 year old do work, and they will keep going without any trouble.  Especially my 6 year old.  She can sit and whip out three pages of math work without stopping.  My 7 year old willo day dream, flip his pencil on the ground, get down and look out the window, fiddle with things around him, and it takes hours to get one page done.  I get so frusterated with him!  I have been teaching him about how to put words into alphabetical order the last 2 days, and keeping him on task has been hard.  So, today instead of getting mad at him, I decided to try something silly to keep him going.  Every time he got down from the table, I threatened him by saying if you don't sit back at the table and keep working, I am going to sing the alphabet to you in an opera voice!!  He laughed at me, and said...No mom!  And got back to work.  When he would hop down again, I started singing my opera alphabet to him.  He plugged his ears, and started working again.  Well, this idea worked for now, but I still need advice on how to keep him from getting distracted when doing his math.  He is a big day dreamer!