Timing is Everything!

How many times has your child spent well over an hour completing a task that should at most have taken them 15 – 30 minutes?  My personal favourite is 3 hours for what should have been a 20 minute math exercise in grade 3.  I almost lost my mind!  How on earth could it take so long!

Simple. As far as my daughter was concerned:

1. It was boring
2. Why bother rushing or trying hard because school was never going to end anyway
3. She understood the concept, so what did it matter if she couldn’t get it right every time (no attention to detail)
4. Any idea that floated through her head was far more interesting to think about than math
5. She was thirsty
6. She had to go to the bathroom (see #5)
7. The dog needed to go out
8. The dog was barking and needed to come back in
9. etc…

With homeschooling three children (ages 8, 6, and 2 at that time), I couldn’t give her 20 minutes of undivided attention very easily (in a word . . . toddler), and if we were interrupted, that was an opportunity for her to disappear and have to be reluctantly pulled back to work.  In my opinion, by age 8 she should be able to sit and complete a 20 minute exercise without supervision, provided she understood the concepts, but she was far from being willing or able to do this.

Focused attention is a learned skill.  Unfortunately she was not learning it!  Quite the opposite.  Our solution was a timer.  We set the timer for 5 minutes.  She had it in front of her and knew that she had to focus on her math for 5 minutes.  Once the timer beeped, she was free for 10 minutes (also timed) to do whatever she wanted (look at books, make something, play with her sisters or the dogs, no electronics).  She then would come back for another 5 focused minutes.  We repeated this process until the lesson was finished.  Amazingly, the actual lesson time was about 20 minutes, although the elapsed time was over an hour.  The benefit was huge!  She was so proud of herself for getting the lesson done quickly and far more accurately than usual.  When you are focused, you don’t make silly mistakes.  Five minutes wasn’t overwhelming.  She knew she could do five minutes, and more importantly it was a hard stop when the timer went.  It didn’t drag on endlessly.  It also gave her a sense of accomplishment and pride.  It wasn’t long before she was using the timer for all her seat work.  As her ability to focus improved, we slowly started lengthening the amount of time by adding 30 seconds at a time, and not increasing the time again until a week had passed.

Of course this method isn’t just for homeschoolers.  Anyone who has helped their child with homework, projects, or even in the classroom will find this an effective tool.  All it takes is consistency and a built-in reward system, getting the work done but also getting “free” time.

Slowly but surely she learned how to focus her attention for longer periods of time.  She also discovered that she could alternate 5 minutes of math with 5 minutes of English,  History, or another subject because they were different enough to be a good break.  This way she got through her schoolwork much faster and actually had free time at the end of the day, a great reward in itself!  Eventually she stopped using the timer, but whenever distractions started to become an issue we brought the timer out again.  Just yesterday she told me that she is still using this technique at University, particularly for projects or readings that she really doesn’t want to do.  It works!