5 year old only interested in fighting - ideas please!

[GeriGeranium]

My 5 year old is literally only interested in fighting - pretending to be a ninja, building Lego robots to fight each other, wants stories about superheroes fighting bad guys etc. He will play with other things for max ten minutes but it’s basically violence that holds his attention.

By all accounts DH was the same at that age and is a nice calm person now so I’m not worried about this, but I’m running out of activities that will engage him but are at all educational!

Any ideas please?

hit the wall spelling? Get some paper plates or cut out circles of paper, and write out letters on each one. You want letters that can spell multiple words. Call out the word, and get him to hit each letter in order to spell the word. He can make sound effects too if he likes! You can do the same with basic addition if you call out the sum and he hits the answer.

Ah that’s genius, he will enjoy that thank you!

Lol I’ve met loads of boys like this. All boys love a fight. Give him a good roughing up every hr or so. A full scale pin and tickle and whatever floats his boat. Then just give him a comedy fist sign and screwed up face each time you walk past ha.

If you do it enough they think you’re boring! 😂

Get him into military history.
You Tube has some great kid friendly videos about warfare and battles. Here's one about Ninja's: []
My DS got into this kind of content around 5 and it got him interested in history more generally. He's a bit a history geek now, at age 7.

Mine is like this, it does get a bit draining I must say! Having said that he does have an incredibly soft and sweet side too which hopefully balances out the violence!

I indulge him in his fighty play, sword fighting, playing with his characters, tickling etc and then send him on to his dad for the rough stuff, wrestling etc.

I always tell him, right we'll do this for 20-30 mins and then we're doing something else. Once he's had his fix he is usually compliant!

He might also like the animal showdown videos link from national geographic kids. they have other series here if he enjoys that one

Ah OP I have the exact same 5 year old with the same attention span.

Coulouring in and seated work just isn't a option 😂

I wrote letters on paper and then ask him to jump on to the correct one when I call it out.

Sometimes we will have a sword fight and to start the fight he has to spell out a word like cat before we can beging.

He's incredibly violent, I also let him watch Dad's Army and now he runs round shouting about Nazi's and I try to do some ww2 history. We renecated D-day and Dunkirk in the living room hiding from over head planes, and the assault began from the stairs in to the living rooms 😂

I do sometimes worry how violent he is, but apparently it's quite normal 🤷🏻‍♀️

Glad it’s not just us! Thanks for all the ideas. I do try to indulge the play fighting to an extent but there’s only so long I can stand holding a piece of Lego and making “pew pew” noises, so it’s good to have some other ideas.

What are your thoughts on reception and year 1 going back June 1st?

I have found some great youtube videos to help with teaching phonics - they are the only thing that's helped teach mine!

www.youtube.com/channel/UClyxR0fgHj9_4ApFNNMaepg?view_as=subscriber

Hope these help with some learning activities! Remember play is important too at this age! Take care