In the beginning, when things are new, they are typically fun and exciting. If this is your first week to homeschool, I hope it’s going great and your family is having fun! Right now, so many people and places are offering FREE resources online to enrich our lives during this uncertain time. It is pretty amazing!! From art lessons, to zoo and museum tours, to drawing with Authors, to listening to stories with Celebrities, and the list goes on… There are so many great ideas out there and people sharing fun ideas. As a full-time homeschool mom I have LOVED seeing everyone home spending time with their kids and taking part in these activities. You want to know why? It’s because this is a special time that God has given us to be with our kids. No one would have chosen this to force us home and force the world to homeschool. God knew we all needed to slow down! These times with school-aged children are precious! As we all say, “They grow up too fast,” So I am so glad to see so many good things come from this crazy new life we are all living.
With that being said, it’s looking like this will be going on for at least another month. As you transition from week 1 to week 2, some of the fun, newness MIGHT wear off. I sure hope it lasts longer, but I know that the reality is that there is a pretty good chance you and your kids (and spouse) start to get stir crazy. I added spouse since most of us are having to abide by the Stay-At-Home order that is now in place. So you might want to consider some ideas to keep your kids motivated, while keeping it fun!
You can Pinterest until you can Pinterest no more. And that is great because there are so many resources out there! Have an open mind and try different things to find what works best for your kid or kids. Don’t be afraid to change what you are doing, or use different methods of motivation with each of your kids.
What I have found that works best is setting the expectations and taking something away if there needs to be a consequence. I don’t like rewarding good behavior because good behavior is expected. I’ve tried it both ways and consequences for motivation seems to be a much better method with my kids. We also talk about the difference of Natural Consequences versus
Here is what we currently implement at home- money for our School Store.
Each kiddo starts the week off with $2.50 of nickels in their jar ($.50 per day of school). During the week, if they are disrespectful, act up, throw a fit, etc. (you decide what your house rules/school rules are), they get one nickel taken out of their jar. For every offense, a nickel is taken. If they are good and do what they are supposed to do with a JOYFUL heart, they get to keep their nickels. At the end of the week, we count their money (which helps reinforce math skills) and they can shop at our School Store.
- Side Note: Our School Store is a basket of items that they kids like to have. Typically these are things I might buy for them anyway and are typically school supplies, but may also include fun little cheap toys. We have things like stickers, fun erasers, fun pencils/mechanical pencils, pencil grips, post-it notes, bookmarks, washi tape, dry erase markers, stamper markers, sticky hands, bouncy balls, etc.
We have a price list and they get to spend their money from the week or they can cash it out and put it in their piggy banks. (We don’t give allowance for normal chores because again…expected.) This gives them motivation to mind during school because they love school supplies like their Mommy!! 🙂 Plus you aren’t spending a fortune on silly things because most of these you already use. Here is our Price List:
- Bookmarks $.10
- Sticky Hands $.10
- Bouncy Balls $.15
- Pencil Grips $.15
- Big Erasers $.20
- Stickers $.20
- Pencils $.25
- Animal Erasers $.50
- Magnetic Bookmarks $.50
- Stamper Markers $.50 each (not a whole package)
- Nerf Darts $.75 (for a pack of 10-found on amazon)
- Dry Erase Markers $.75
- Post-It Notes $.75
- Washi Tape $1.00
- Scotch Tape $1.50
Positive Points for this method:
- Money motivates them.
- They encourage each other to mind and stay on task.
- They learn the value of money and are less wasteful with their resources. (They used to go through so many Post-It notes of mine and once they bought them with their own money, they realized they were much more valuable.
- It teaches them how to count money.
- It helps them prioritize what make good choices.
- It teaches them how to save money. If they really want another toy, they can chose to save the money and buy something else at a later time. They don’t have to buy things they don’t need or want.
- They have offered to donate money to the other child if they needed an extra nickel. (BONUS- Random Act of Kindness! I will discuss what we use to encourage and reward Random Acts of Kindness later.)
Other Motivation Ideas we have used:
- Jar of Beans- (Use dried Pinto Beans). Same ideas as nickels. Give them a certain number of beans each day. When we used this method, I gave one bean per “thing” we did in school each day (one per subject, one per lesson, etc.). They got one taken away each time they acted up. At the end of the day we added their beans to their Bean Jar. Once they earned a certain amount of beans (I drew lines on the glass jars for certain levels), they could earn something. They could “spend” their beans for receive a prize/reward or they could keep them in their jar to earn a bigger prize/reward. Once they were in their jar, they were theirs, so they didn’t want to lose their beans each day so they could add them to the jar. We had prizes like popsicles, ice cream, something from the School Store basket, or out of a “Special” prize basket I had of toys.
- Earn Screen Time- give them 5 minutes of screen time for each school item they completed with a JOYFUL heart. If they act up, they don’t receive the 5 minutes for that item, even though they still have to complete the item because its expected. At the end of the day, once everything is completed, they get their total amount of screen time they earned.
- Earn an Extra Chore for bad behavior.
I hope this gives you some ideas for motivation. Have fun with it! I hope you continue to have a great success homeschooling!!