Teaching very active little children

Little children are made active and busy but some are more active and busy than others.

This is about teaching the more active types! My only right to write about this is that I have one of these active children and one of my older children was also very busy as a young child. I am not talking about children with a medical diagnosis. 

These busy little people are lovely and lovable but tiring.

These are my assumptions:

• This is a phase of childhood. It will, to some extent, get better with time. It isn't fair to expect a four year old to spend as long writing as his brother who is almost a decade older.
• Active, wriggly children need to learn to sit still to work but this isn't going to happen very quickly.
• The very active, wriggly types tend to be little boys.

I love these busy little people but they are hard work. Not needing much sleep has been a feature of both of mine and that is tiring. 

Practically

• Loads of exercise. My busy child can't sleep without sufficient exercise. This usually means going outside every day. We don't worry too much about the weather provided there isn't a severe weather warning!

• Multi-sensory learning which doesn't require keeping still all the time. We chalk letters, make letters in the sand in the park, use a multi-sensory phonics programme, cook with geography, history and maths, do science experiments and so on. 

• Read aloud-this sounds strange but has been really, really important. Our very active children have been obvious from a very young age:weeks to months of age. This wasn't a surprise aged four. Reading aloud from babyhood has helped these children love some quieter time, improved their vocabularies and aided their attention spans. Both of these children have sat still and looked at picture books. I haven't allowed moving around while I read unless I'm reading to an older sibling. As their concentration increases, I increase the number of books read-this hasn't been difficult to achieve.

• Sufficient hands on activities at home. Home education does mean more free time. There isn't any travel time to and from school or nursery or collecting siblings. We have found that a wooden train set, puzzles, Duplo, Meccano and a model garage are helpful tools in keeping busy people happy and occupied. They also lead to many fascinating discussions and drawings.

Does this work? Hmm-sample size of two makes this difficult. If you see my current active child after a time of still concentration, you might wonder. 

There are other people with busy boys. These websites have many ideas for just this population!

• Frugal Fun for boys
• Making boys men

The book Homegrown preschooler has a positive attitude to teaching these children at home and many helpful ideas.

My Pinterest board, Home ed for little ones has pins with ideas for this type of child.

Do you have any very active children? Any helpful tips?

This is linked to a Schoohouse Crew blog cruise called Teaching the chatty wriggly child.