How I Got My 12 Year Old To Do Math All Summer (and think it was his idea)

When I first began homeschooling,  I read lots of books that promised that it would be great.  That by teaching my kids at home they would develop a love of learning that students in government schools don't.  Now, I'm sure at least some of those books tried warned me that sometimes things won't go so well, but I was too excited at the time to pay any attention.

Years later I have discovered that like all emotions "love of learning" is a capricious thing that comes and goes.  Sure, the kids love learning when they are hunting for interesting bugs in the backyard, or when we're making Viking coins out of Sculpy, but somehow the love of learning has never quite kicked in during work on long division or fractions.  Particularly for my younger son, who for the past year or two has been struggling in math.  And so I resorted to something that I thought I would never do.  Bribery.

You see, the boy likes Legos.  Scratch that, the boy loves Legos.  He likes them so much that he goes on eBay looking for sets and mini-figures.  Then he likes to show me the things he finds on eBay while making sad faces at me.  So I told him he could earn money over the summer by doing math pages.  I printed him a stack of worksheets and told him he'd get a dollar for every five worksheets he finished.  And guess what?  By the end of summer vacation, the boy who was always complaining that math is too hard, takes too long, and is boring was pestering me to print him more math worksheets.  He earned enough to buy one of the Lego figures he wanted, and still has enough to get something else. 

This has worked out well for me.  First of all because now I know that he is perfectly capable of doing math, and that he doesn't have some sort of learning disability.  And secondly, because his math skills have improved significantly.

So when the love of learning just isn't happening,  it's time to use the love of something else as motivation.