Works for me Wednesday - or Friday . . .
My first real works-for-me Wednesday post! I thought of something inspiring a while ago in regards to exercise, and found out there was no WFMW carnival that week. After two months, I finally have another inspiration to share!
Some days homeschooling drags, a bit unmotivated. Sometimes we hit a tough spell and attitudes droop. Overall, I absolutely love homeschooling, and the vast majority of days you could not pay my children to consider a traditional school. However, there are those days.
Last week I struck an interesting motivational tool, but had to wait a week to share to make sure that it worked, and it did!
On Monday we were actually having a really good school day and I realized that we could finish our school work for the week early if we kept clipping along at that pace. So, I bribed, I mean, offered some incentive to my kids to keep plugging along.
If we could finish all our school work by noon on Friday we would pack a picnic lunch (complete with basket and blanket) and head to a park for some play time. WOW!!!! The whole week, while not perfect, had this air of anticipation about it. They enjoyed their studies even more than usual and worked diligently to complete their assignments.
This is, however, so non-Charlotte Mason. She says the accomplishment should be reward in itself, and I generally agree. However, that enthusiasm was hard not to enjoy, and could definitely not be ignored.
So, this week on Monday we chose our reward for a week well worked. After lunch on Friday, if all school work is done we will have snow cones and caramel corn! They have to work extra hard because we will be gone most of the day Thursday at the apple orchard, but they put in enough effort today to make up for it already. I know we will do it, and they are already discussing next week's reward, even while encouraging each other to reach this week's.
And, letting them choose the reward (with my approval, of course), saves me the effort of trying to come up with the incentives, too. This is totally a win-win situation!
Some days homeschooling drags, a bit unmotivated. Sometimes we hit a tough spell and attitudes droop. Overall, I absolutely love homeschooling, and the vast majority of days you could not pay my children to consider a traditional school. However, there are those days.
Last week I struck an interesting motivational tool, but had to wait a week to share to make sure that it worked, and it did!
On Monday we were actually having a really good school day and I realized that we could finish our school work for the week early if we kept clipping along at that pace. So, I bribed, I mean, offered some incentive to my kids to keep plugging along.
If we could finish all our school work by noon on Friday we would pack a picnic lunch (complete with basket and blanket) and head to a park for some play time. WOW!!!! The whole week, while not perfect, had this air of anticipation about it. They enjoyed their studies even more than usual and worked diligently to complete their assignments.
This is, however, so non-Charlotte Mason. She says the accomplishment should be reward in itself, and I generally agree. However, that enthusiasm was hard not to enjoy, and could definitely not be ignored.
So, this week on Monday we chose our reward for a week well worked. After lunch on Friday, if all school work is done we will have snow cones and caramel corn! They have to work extra hard because we will be gone most of the day Thursday at the apple orchard, but they put in enough effort today to make up for it already. I know we will do it, and they are already discussing next week's reward, even while encouraging each other to reach this week's.
And, letting them choose the reward (with my approval, of course), saves me the effort of trying to come up with the incentives, too. This is totally a win-win situation!
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