Sample Detailed Learning Session
Determining How Much Time to Spend in Learning Sessions
You might be wondering how many learning sessions your child should have each day and how long they should last. Actually, there’s no simple answer to this question. First, it depends on the age of the child (younger children will usually have less patience and ability to pay attention). It also depends on the individual child’s ability to sit and learn; two children of the same age may have very different needs. One may be much more active and may find it difficult to sit. Such children may not be able to pay attention to an activity for very long; while another may already enjoy activities such as looking at books or making puzzles with a parent.
In the beginning, getting your child to sit and focus for 30 seconds can count as a success. So a learning session could be 5 sittings of 30 seconds each, with one minute play break in between each sitting. So the total of 2 minutes and 30 seconds of sitting and 4 minutes of playing could add up to a learning session that is under 10 minutes. Another child may be able to begin with 5 sittings of 3 minutes each, for a total of about 15 minutes of learning trials per session. If you add 4 minutes of play break time (1 minute between trial sets) that child’s learning sessions would last about 20 minutes each (including the short play breaks after each set of teaching trials).
In any case, try not to ask your child to sit still and pay attention to you for longer than you feel reasonably confident she can and will. It’s fine to have your child sit and work with you for just 5 or 10 trials at a time. Then you can give her a little play break for about a minute, and then have another short sitting of 5 or 10 more trials, and so on. If your child is learning to complete a puzzle and to string beads, to imitate your actions, to match identical objects, and to follow instructions without objects, a typical session/lesson plan might look like this:
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Be Sure to Vary the Order of Teaching Programs from Session to Session
You should be careful to change the order of the teaching programs from session to session so that your child does not come to expect a very specific sequence and become upset when you change things around. For example, the next time you do a similar session with the same teaching programs, you could do the beads first, the matching second, the puzzle third, following instructions without objects fourth, and imitation last. The order itself doesn’t matter; it’s just important that it is different each time
How to Increase the Time Spent in Learning Sessions
As your child gets used to sitting and doing what you ask her to do, you should increase the time you spend in learning sessions, by increasing the number of trials in each teaching program and also the number of teaching programs in each learning session. Remember though, that you will probably need to do this very gradually at first. So, for example, once a child is cooperating well with about 5 teaching programs, for example, puzzle, beads, imitation, matching, and receptive commands (following instructions without objects) you could begin to require just a little more in each set of trials. Here is an example of what you might try next.
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Of course, all of these are just suggestions. The amount of time you spend in learning sessions will also depend on how quickly your child is learning from the natural environment. In other words, you should try to gauge how much your child is learning, just by being included in the family and neighborhood activities. If your child is learning well from the home and neighborhood, you won’t need to spend so much time in these learning sessions. However, if your child is learning slowly from the natural environment, and you want to give her some extra help, try to plan more time for learning sessions.
Either way, the amount of time you spend in your learning sessions will also depend on your child’s attention span. Some children will be able to increase their daily learning session time up to a total of about 3 hours, broken up across several sessions (for example, 3 or 4 sessions of 45 minutes to one hour each). And remember, there should be some some nice long breaks (30 minutes to an hour or more) in between sessions, in addition to the short play breaks during the sessions. Of course, it could take considerable time to build to this, beginning with very short sessions of five minutes or less and building very gradually over a period of weeks or months.
Some children will get too bored and frustrated if asked to pay attention for a long time, even if you increase the length of the sessions very gradually. If you try to make them sit and do learning activities for too long a time, their behavior may get worse and learning will be very slow. So you must judge your child’s ability to pay attention and ask of her only what you think she is ready to do.
We also understand that you are not a professional teacher; you probably have many other responsibilities throughout your day. So, even if your child does appear ready to work for three or four hours a day, you may not be able to devote this much time to teaching your child. You are the only one who can really determine the optimal amount of time that you and your child can or should spend in your learning sessions. Do what you are able to do, and what seems to best fit your child’s ability to pay attention and learn.