Tagged: ABCmouse

ABC Mouse / Age of Learning

Age of Learning Reviews the Attention Span Issues Among Children Ages 2-10

Age of Learning, creators of ABCmouse Early Learning Academy and Adventure Academy, understand the frustrations that virtually all parents and teachers experience when trying to get a child to focus on a task for an extended period of time. Seemingly no number of discussions or amount of pleading can convince a child to buckle down and stay focused long enough to complete the required work. This is largely due to the correlation between attention span and age. As children grow older, the average length of their attention span increases. The education experts at Age of Learning know that for most children below the age of 10, focusing on a task like homework for more than 30 minutes is nearly impossible. Today, Age of Learning Reviews hopes to educate the public on attention span expectations, ways that children’s attention spans can be negatively affected, and strategies to help increase kids’ focus. 

Many childhood specialists agree that a general rule of thumb when determining a child’s attention span is to expect 2-3 minutes of attention per year of their age. It should be noted that while some developmental researchers put this number closer to 5 minutes per year, most agree that number is too high. Although every child is different, on average, most children can be expected to be able to focus for the following amount of time: 

  • Age 4, 8-12 minutes 
  • Age 5, 10-14 minutes
  • Age 6, 12-18 minutes
  • Age 7, 14-21 minutes 
  • Age 8, 16-24 minutes 
  • Age 9, 18-27 minutes 
  • Age 10, 20-30 minutes

These numbers can still vary greatly, depending on internal and external factors such as how loud a room is, how tired or hungry a child is, or simply how interested they are in a particular activity.

To better help a child concentrate both at home, and in the classroom, parents should first ensure their children are getting enough sleep. According to the National Sleep Foundation (NSF), school-aged children should sleep between 9 -13 hours a night. Without the necessary 9 – 13 hours of sleep, the brain’s neurons become overworked, making alertness and concentration more difficult. Next, make sure the child is not hungry, and then set the child up in an areas with sufficient light for the task and a minimum amount of surrounding noise and other potential distractions, if possible. 

Once the child is set up for success, the best strategy is to allow him or her frequent breaks throughout a lengthy task.Use the age-specific guidelines listed above to decide how many breaks there should be. If, for example, a 10-year-old child is tasked with completing a paper that would take over an hour, parents and educators should encourage the child to take two 5 minute breaks. This will help increase the child’s concentration by breaking up the hour-long task into three manageable 20 minute sessions. Rather than experiencing a failed attempt to concentrate for an hour without breaks, a child able to concentrate through three 20-minute sessions will feel a sense of accomplishment, which will lead to future confidence in his or her concentration abilities. 

ABC Mouse / Age of Learning

Age of Learning and the 10th Anniversary of ABCmouse

Age of Learning

Age of Learning, one of the top educational technology producers of digital and online learning programs for children, celebrated a major milestone this year. Its flagship product, ABCmouse.com Early Learning Academy, marked its 10th anniversary.

While the ABCmouse.com website launched publicly in 2010, the Age of Learning team, including leading childhood education professionals, had already spent more than three years planning, developing, and testing ABCmouse before it launched with an early learning curriculum covering preschool through kindergarten and offering more than 2,000 learning activities. Just six months later, ABCmouse received the first of its many awards, the Parents’ Choice Gold Award. In 2014, Age of Learning released ABCmouse Early Learning Academy as an iOS and Android app, making its comprehensive early learning curriculum—now with more than 5,000 learning activities—available on tablets and smartphones.  Since then, ABCmouse has regularly ranked as one of the leading children’s learning app in both the kids and learning categories of the App Store. In 2015, ABCmouse hit another major benchmark when the first 1 billion learning activities were completed on the program. This number has grown exponentially, and to date, children have now completed over 7 billion learning activities on ABCmouse.

Age of Learning has also continuously worked to keep the ABCmouse product growing to meet the needs of older children and to make the curriculum even more comprehensive: adding a 1st grade curriculum to ABCmouse in 2016 and a 2nd grade curriculum in 2017. The ABCmouse curriculum now offers five times the number of learning activities—more than 10,000—than it did when Age of Learning launched it 10 years ago! There’s even a new My ABCmouse Classroom Live experience within ABCmouse, delivering daily classes with on-demand instruction led by real teachers and independent learning activities, a high-priority feature Age of Learning developed rapidly in 2020 to better meet the growing needs of children affected by pandemic-related school closures who were homeschooling.

Doug Dohring, the founder and Chairman of Age of Learning, first began working on ABCmouse after realizing the potential of creating a children’s website focused on a high-quality early education curriculum. By combining a comprehensive, standards-based curriculum designed by education experts with an engaging entertainment platform that makes learning fun for kids, the Age of Learning team has successfully helped educate millions of children all over the United States. Reflecting Age of Learning’s commitment to help children everywhere build a strong foundation for academic success, the company launched a series of Education Access Initiatives to reach millions of additional children by offering the full, award-winning ABCmouse program at no cost to teachers, libraries, and community centers, including afterschool programs and public housing authorities throughout the U.S.

ABCmouse isn’t just popular—it works! And Age of Learning is committed to funding independent research to evaluate and report on its efficacy. Three large-scale research studies assessed the effectiveness of ABCmouse and concluded that the program helps accelerate children’s learning and helps them advance in phonics, vocabulary, literacy, and numeracy. One study reported that children who frequently used ABCmouse scored more than 50 percent higher than children who had not subscribed to the site on reading and math skills assessments.

The ABCmouse team at Age of Learning has been incredibly proud of its success in the U.S. and has worked to extend the reach of ABCmouse globally. Two years ago, Age of Learning partnered with Tencent to launch the ABCmouse English Learning Academy in China to great success. The program, designed for children ages three to eight, features more than 5,000 different learning activities and includes games, songs, and language books. After the success of ABCmouse in China, Age of Learning forged a partnership the following year with Rakuten to offer the ABCmouse English Learning Academy exclusively Japan. The company expects its global expansion to accelerate in the coming years, with ABCmouse reaching into Europe and South America. In 2020, Age of Learning also launched the Age of Learning Foundation, a non-profit philanthropic organization to extend the company’s education outreach efforts to the children furthest from opportunity worldwide.

At the Age of Learning 10th anniversary company event, founder Doug Dohring spoke to his company about their success over the last decade.

“Through ABCmouse, we’ve made a difference in the lives of millions of children, parents, and teachers. The success of this project is based on the talent within our team. I am incredibly proud of the work our staff have done with ABCmouse over the past decade and am excited to see what we can accomplish with the next.” – Doug Dohring, founder and Chairman of Age of Learning, Inc.