"Tuesday" Flyer
2.22.22
WHERE ALL CHILDREN ARE EMBRACED, CHALLENGED, AND CELEBRATED!
WHERE ARE CROSSING GUARDS NEEDED?
The Safe Routes to School work group will be reviewing requests for school crossing guards this spring. March 4 is the deadline to let the city staff know you’d like to see a crossing guard in a certain location. To make a request, please complete the following form: https://arcg.is/0jqTLK. If you’d like to support efforts to encourage more students to walk, bike, and wheel at your school, please reach out to Laura McCulloch, Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health community health equity specialist, at saferoutes@ldchealth.org.
NESTS LESSON - ATTENTION CONTROL
This week is our next NEST lesson, which is a time when the entire school takes time to learn the same social/emotional lesson. Our Ci3T team developed both the topics and the lessons over topics that research shows to be most impactful in students learning. So far we have had lessons on emotional knowledge, emotional regulation, empathy, and gratitude. This month's focus is attention control and how students can increase their attention and ability to focus. Here are some activities at home you can do to help increase your students' attention:
1. Building Activities
It helps improve attention span and concentration to give children a goal and building materials. For example, pass out playing cards and ask the kids to see which team can build a higher house of cards before it falls. Younger kids can use blocks of different shapes and colors to work individually.
2. Memory Games
Memory games are some of the most popular concentration activities for students.3. 3. Puzzle Games
3. Puzzles
Puzzles are great for your children’s mind and cognitive development. To be more precise, puzzles provide that key opportunity for a child to develop fine motor skills, improve hand-eye coordination, think in a logical way to solve a problem, improve memory and improve their concentration and attention span.
4. Timed Activities
Timed games are not only versatile activities to improve concentration in children, but are very appealing to students because they want to win and beat the timer. Give your children a whiteboard and marker then pick out a master word from a hat, put 1 minute on the clock and have students write down as many words as they can from the letters of the master word. If you have a child who struggles with chores, this is a trick that may help as well. Focus can be difficult if you say “Clean your room.” However, if you set a timer and have a race to see who can pick up all the laundry, empty the trash cans, put a certain category of toy away, it can help a child who struggles with focus know exactly what to concentrate on so they can get it done. The longer the timer goes each time, you are helping them improve their focusing ability.
5. Sequencing Activities
There is a positive correlation between sequencing ability and focus levels in students making them the perfect activities to improve attention and concentration in children.
6. Cooking Activities
Great in-class activities that help children focus longer are following recipes, baking, or decorating sugar cookies.
7. Storytelling Game
This game is super easy to play as a family and can carry on as long as you can remember the previous person's story. One person starts with the beginning of a story, such as 'I went to the shop and I bought a tomato'. The following person repeats the story, and adds an item: 'I went to the shop and I bought a tomato and a newspaper'. This sequence carries on until someone forgets an item! You can alter this game to be as challenging or as simple as you like. Another version was played during Nests by students in grades 3-5. In this version, you start a story with one sentence and then each person adds to the story. For instance, the first person says, “It was a dark and stormy night.” Then each person in the room (or car) takes turns adding a sentence to the story!
8. Playing Catch
A game of catch gets your child to both react quickly and maintain focus. It’s one activity that active children will love to play and each time you can play for a little longer to keep improving their attention span.
9. Card or Board Games
Especially games that require focus, such as SNAP, Concentration, and Slapjack, can help children have fun while practicing maintaining focus.
10. Crafting such as bead or pasta necklaces.
This could be made harder for older or easier for younger children depending on the materials used. The act of threading something on a string aids both focus and hand-eye coordination.
FOR OUR BILINGUAL FAMILIES
BA Family Bravos
CONTACT MS. RENK
Email: heather.renk@usd497.org
Website: usd497.org/Domain/8
Phone: 785-832-5600