We often expect more from our kids than we do from ourselves, don’t we? We expect our kids to have the motivation to finish school work because we say so, or because all kids simply have to. If somebody asked us to go to work today just because, would we? I mean, if we were just told to turn up because it’s what good adults should do, and you weren’t getting a salary or hourly rate to be there? I sure wouldn’t. Yet adults expect kids to do work that they see no value in yet, and get upset when they don’t enthusiastically comply. What to do? Today, I’m going to share some ways we can motivate our children to complete their homeschool lessons.
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation can help explain why we do, or don’t get things done. Everybody probably knows these terms, but let’s break it down anyway ~
Intrinsic motivation ~ you’re doing it because you actually want to, without the need for external reward.
Extrinsic motivation ~ you’re doing something only because you’re forced to, or to get a reward.
I would give significant amounts of time, for free, to work on a ministry I’m passionate about. I’m intrinsically motivated to serve the Lord because I want to please him and bless other people.
I would not go to work all week to teach in a classroom for fun. For this I would need extrinsic motivation. The promise that I will be paid for my labour.
We all need to feel like we’re getting some value out of what we’re doing whether we’re children or adults.
Different Homeschool Students
We have two completely different students in our homeschool. One who loves maths, writing, science, history, music practice, sport, and probably anything else she could squeeze into her week. She would do all of this without a reward because she loves to be busy and she feels satisfied checking a ton of stuff of her checklist everyday. She is a highly motivated student.
We have another student who is basically the complete opposite. She likes maths, since this year, thankfully. Most of her other subjects she would rather pass. When we began homeschooling straight out of kindy, there was a mammoth battle to get much of anything done.
A Word on Personal Worth
Does that make her any less valuable than her sister? No.
Does God love her any less because so far she is not looking academic? No.
Will he love her any less if she doesn’t go to uni? No.
Do we love her any less? No. We know that God made all people different with their own special gifts and talents.
We weren’t interested in unschooling a neurotypical kid who simply didn’t want to learn foundational information. She needed to develop a moderate level of literacy and numeracy for her future. She can’t see that yet though. Kids, for the most part, are not abstract thinkers. They only care about what value a thing has to them now, in the present, real world. When she is sitting in front of her basic grammar task and hating it, she can’t summons any intrinsic motivation by imagining how any of it will be useful ten years from now when she’s writing job applications. So, cue a little help with extrinsic motivation.
Rather than battling with our kids, we can provide that extrinsic motivation, hoping that the intrinsic motivation to extend themselves as students will kick in later on.
Two Ways We Motivate Our Kids To Learn
Timeline With Weekly Rewards
Kids like to see things. If we say there are only eight weeks until the holidays, that might seem like an age to a child. Weeks and weeks until they can, finally, skip all of their lessons for a while. How about if you break it down into something they can see with weekly rewards attached?
Our school term aligns with the Australian school terms. We create themed timelines the kids can skip through every term. The theme aligns with something we are learning in one of our subjects. Last term it was astronauts jumping across the planets, and ending up at the moon. This term it’s birds flitting around on different trees.
The rewards are simple, but the kids look forward to them. Every Friday afternoon, when the last lesson of the week is done they fly their bird to the next tree, and look forward to the matching reward. It makes a difference. Here they are from this term.
This term included a camping trip to Sydney, which you can read more about here if you like travelling ~
Pocket Money
Next, we provide pocket money. If somebody is melting down about a lesson, or trying to negotiate out of one, the thought of deducted pocket money quickly fixes that! I know it’s a controversial matter among parents, but I love it because it also teaches kids how to use money from a young age.
Our girls love getting their pocket money. They know they have to save ten percent, tithe ten percent, and the rest is theirs. One of our kids used to burn through their money on useless things. We’d try to convince her not to buy that cheap, plastic little toy, but she’d insist on it anyway. After a week, the toy was cast aside and no longer used. We were able to chat about how these items were really a waste afterall. A waste of pocket money, and bad for the environment. Now she thinks more carefully about her purchase which is such a critical life skill! Pocket money is an absolute winner for us.
Building Intrinsic Motivation
While we’re using the power of extrinsic motivation right now, we’re working to build intrinsic motivation alongside that. How?
Connections to The Real World
As we learn, I try to show how our learning connects to the real world as often as possible. I print games with life application and talk about how I’m using the learning in real life everyday. Recently, I printed a game on Twinkl using perimeter and area to work out real life problems like painting and tiling.
Say I’m working out how many of an item I need, and it requires multiplication. I’ll calculate it out loud and emphasize how important it is to learn your times tables. I’m hoping that it shows the children that learning is super useful and something that will help us function better as adults. Not something we only do for a reward.
Setting an Example
Mum and Dad as an example of lifelong learning and curiosity. Kids see that learning is useful when the adults around them still have an interest in exploring, reading, and growing. I think the example parents set for children will help them develop into intrinsically motivated lifelong learners too. Let’s face it, they’re going to need to be anyway thanks to the rapid pace of change in our modern society.
Outcomes of Motivating Children to Learn
These tactics have been easy to implement, but effective in our homeschool. I have to add though, that we keep a consistent standard and schedule in our homeschool. Kids have to know very clearly what’s expected of them to in order to receive their rewards. Otherwise it can become disheartening rather than motivating. They also have to know that we’ll follow through with the reward when they hold up their part. These days, I am happy to say that there are far less melt downs over lessons in our home because we have a rhythm and rewards for work achieved.
I hope this post helps you motivate your children in their homeschool lessons. If you have any other strategies you use to encourage learning, we’d love to hear about them in the comments.
