According to the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, concentration is "the action and effect of focusing one's attention intensely on something".

For our daily lives, it is important to learn how to concentrate. Having a good ability to concentrate helps us enormously to be more effective when carrying out any task. The benefits of good concentration are many: it increases our memory, our effectiveness in decision making, our precision and our agility in the challenge at hand.

Attention span develops as a child's cognitive development progresses. For this reason, as they grow, they will be able to maintain their attention for longer periods of time. As a guideline, and taking into account the particular differences of each child, you should know that at 5-6 years of age they are able to maintain their concentration for up to 25 minutes at a time; a child between 8 and 10 years of age can concentrate for up to 45 minutes, and only from the age of 12 they are able to concentrate for an hour.

It is important to be aware that being able to maintain attention is also influenced by other variables such as the circumstances in which the activity takes place, the context and other environmental and personal stimuli. If we can control some of these variables, we will improve concentration. Is there anything we can do to increase our child's concentration?

 

Guidelines to promote concentration

Sleeping enough hours, depending on the age of the child, provides them with the cerebral and cognitive recovery necessary to be able to perform perfectly the following day. Sleeping well provides us with a good state of lucidity in wakefulness.

• Eating a balanced diet to help them face the day with foods rich in phosphorus, Omega 3 fatty acids and calcium, amongst others.
• Prepare the materials needed to avoid interruptions in the middle of the activity.
• Identify the time of day when you are most inclined to concentrate, avoiding the evening and early morning, in order to put into practice some of the games or exercises that will be proposed later on.
• Find a suitable space for the activity you are going to do: if it is study, it should be a well-lit, quiet, airy area, and preferably always the same space so that you associate it with the activity and this predisposes you to concentration.

The basic strategies for concentration are linked to two fundamental aspects: avoiding external distractions and, on the other hand, having a mental state with an adequate level of activation to be able to maintain focus on the task for a certain period of time.

Games and exercises to improve concentration

1. Jigsaw puzzles are an excellent observation exercise that require great concentration when looking at the pieces. They are games that are fun for children and adults alike. A hobby for them that is also a fantastic workout for the brain. In the case of puzzles, it helps them to look for solutions and practice deductive logic, and in the case of spot the differences, to focus on the details as much as possible.
2. A good exercise to encourage children's concentration is to encourage them to copy pictures, as it involves a lot of attention to detail.
3. Drawings with numbers force them to notice and join the lines or colour according to what is indicated. These exercises are a great way for children to improve their concentration. To get it perfect, they have to count the squares and take into account every single detail. You can ask them to follow the example or to copy it in reverse.
4. Memory games or matching games also require a lot of attention. It exercises memory and concentration. Children should look at a series of picture cards that they will stop looking at in a few seconds. They have to remember in which position the repeated pictures were in pairs.
5. Spot the difference games exercises sustained attention. This activity requires special attention to small details in order to spot the differences. When you are faced with this type of test, looking at the whole picture will not help you, you have to break it down and divide it into smaller sections.
6. Matching text to pictures or putting a comic strip in the right order is fun and helps concentration.
7. Learning the words of songs or poems is also good training.
8. Playing chess is the number one sport for increasing concentration. That is why at Coruña British International School we offer this activity beyond the classroom. This game demands a great capacity for concentration in order to analyse every situation on the board, make the right decisions and anticipate the opponent's moves.
9. Labyrinths are games where children have to focus their attention and find a way out and even though it may seem easy, it is not when the labyrinth becomes complicated and the child begins to lose patience. A fantastic exercise to encourage concentration!
10. Board games such as cards, dominoes, goose, Parcheesi... combine fun with the obligation to concentrate for long periods of time. Most board games require planning a strategy and knowing how to improvise according to the steps your opponents take. It is therefore important to keep your mind alert.

Finally, a curiosity about concentration: did you know that if your child draws while in class, he or she will be able to concentrate, keet distractions at bay and better retain what the teacher is saying? So says a study published in Time magazine. It seems contradictory, but perhaps it is a good way to start with the concentration exercises described here.