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You love working with your child on activities. You want to be able to sit with her and have a Pinterest worthy afternoon of playing with homemade toys and games. And she doesn’t pay attention for a second. What’s going wrong? Is there something wrong with her?
Not necessarily. Attention is a complex skill that in children must be developed. We may notice in ourselves as well, times of difficulty paying attention. Especially in today’s fast moving world of technology and constant external distractions and stimulation. Your child’s brain is still developing in this skill and it is normal for her to change activities often.
One thing can helps children pay attention longer to a task is music. As an Occupational Therapist working with toddlers, I often see that it is difficult to encourage a child to do something like coloring. They have no idea what you are asking of them! A 17-month-old child may not have any idea what you are asking them to do if you give them a crayon and paper.
Yet if you pair this activity with a song, and repeat the activity over the course of a few days and weeks and also act like you are having great fun while doing it, your child will start to follow along with the activity. I promise.
Why you should use songs to enhance learning fine motor skills
- Increase attention span
By using music, you can develop a routine with the activity, which has a consistent length (if you use the same song it won’t change in length of time). This is helpful especially when the child has difficulty with their attention span. And you also, will be able to easily see if the child is improving by seeing that when you first start doing this when them, they cannot engage in the activity the whole time. But with practice, they will engage in it through he whole song
- Improve ability to follow directions
This is a skill for children to develop. By pairing directions with musical tones, it engages different parts of the brain that enhance learning. The child can gain familiarity with words like “paper” and “red” through the song. In practicing this activity, they will also start to gain language skills and then be better able to follow your directions in then future.
- Makes the activity fun and easily repeatable
A skill like coloring can seem very obvious to us as adults. But when we first ask a toddler to color in a picture, they do not yet have an idea of how long they should color, or how much space etc. I always say, imagine someone came up to you, put a strange looking tool in your hand and asked you to move it back an forth and you had no idea why. This may be how your child feels when confronted with a coloring task or any new activity you give him/her.
I have a link below to a song I wrote called The Coloring Song. Get a piece of paper, some crayons and your toddler and follow along with the instructions. Try it twice a day for 5 days and see what happens. Don’t be discouraged if your toddler doesn’t follow along right away. Keep trying!
The Coloring Song by Chrissy Roberts
Get my full CD here
“>Kid Notes by Chrissy Roberts
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