Motivation & Rewards, Newbie, Tips, 4yr old boy

[Guest tcwave]

Hi,

 

My wife and I are newbie's in the homeschooling/classical education space and would appreciate your feedback & advice on:

 

1. How do you motivate your young (4yr-6yr) children to do lessons? Do you provide rewards & if so what works for you?

 

2. What advice would you have for parents that are interested in learning more about homeschooling/classical eduction?

 

3. Generally how many min per day should we target for lessons for a 4 year old?

 

Background:

 

We have two boys, 4yr and 18 months. The 4yr old loves rewards and we have been using stickers, art projects, and educational videos. I read that it is important to make sure that he "earns" something as opposed to me just constantly providing positive feedback (the concern is that he will associate pleasing his parents with love as opposed to being able to understand that working hard results in a reward and internal satisfaction) Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

 

He is currently doing ETC book B and has previously completed WorldlyWise 3000 K and ETC book A. He will be going into his second year of Mandarin lessons (which he loves) and also does music lessons (violin). His current attention span is a bit sporadic, however he does about 5 pages of ETC a day (~30 min), sometimes split up into 2 sessions. He seems to really enjoy "lessons" and definitely likes the rewards associated with them, but I wanted to see what others do and if there is a way to decrease the focus on rewards.

 

Lastly, our 4 year old will be attending pre-k at our local Catholic School. Our thinking at this point are to supplement Catholic School with a strong at-home curriculum that provides him a foundation to get the most out of his classroom experience. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated as well.

 

Thanks for your suggestions/feedback.

Ted

[Night Elf]

I have precocious children too, and I regret moving from delighted in their interests to expecting those interests to continue. You'll hear 2 main schools of thought on this, obviously. 1. Don't push a 4 year old into academics even if he is interested. You supply him with what he needs, be there to learn with him, and let him walk away at any time he chooses. He has years ahead of him to learn how to sit and study. 2. Decide your 4 year old is ready for formal school and begin the process of teaching the child to sit still and do the work because he has to learn sometime.

 

2. What advice would you have for parents that are interested in learning more about homeschooling/classical eduction?

 

Obviously, start with The Well-Trained Mind. Excellent book. Hopefully others will chime in with other suggestions. My other favorite book is about a family who chose to keep their kids out of school, both brick & mortar schools and homeschool programs. But I read it repeatedly because it inspires me when I get tired of homeschooling, which I've been doing 9 years now.

 

3. Generally how many min per day should we target for lessons for a 4 year old?

 

In my personal opinion, you only do as much as your child wants to do. If he wants a 30 minute math lesson, let him run with it. If he's tired after 5 mins., let him choose something else to do. Again, I don't think formal schooling is always a good idea for littles. Both of my children were doing formal Kindergarten at age 4, already reading at a higher level. And both were burned out by the time we hit 2nd & 3rd grade. It took me years to realize the mistakes I had made. :)

 

I read that it is important to make sure that he "earns" something as opposed to me just constantly providing positive feedback (the concern is that he will associate pleasing his parents with love as opposed to being able to understand that working hard results in a reward and internal satisfaction) Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

 

I completely disagree with this idea. Earned rewards become expectations and children may never learn to find an inner satisfaction in doing something without that expected reward. I'm not saying there should never be rewards but I think they should be occasional and not part of your daily lives. There can never be enough parental praise. I really don't "get" that idea at all.

 

Our thinking at this point are to supplement Catholic School with a strong at-home curriculum that provides him a foundation to get the most out of his classroom experience.

 

There is an afterschool board. I have no experience with doing this, but having had children in the school system, I can't even begin to imagine being able to do this. But I know there are many people doing it successfully!

[NanceXToo]

Just for the heck of it, you might want to take a peek at a book called "Better Late Than Early," just to balance out your thinking a bit.

[Guest tcwave]

Thank you both for your thoughts. I appreciate your insight. We have a lot to learn and consider before moving forward and this forum has been very helpful.

 

-Ted

[SnegurochkaL]

Hi, I have an almost 4 years old boy who is very interested in learning. My oldest child is 8, so my son wants to do his study because his sister is doing hers. I don't push him, he does it when he is ready and ask for it. My son is a mathy child, so he is doing his math book (similar to Singapore Earliybird Math, but little bit more advance).

Also, he is learning a lot from his sister(French and German) just by playing together. My son didn't have any formal reading training, but he is reading some books (or pretending to read) by memorizing stories. Your child has a good start( taking in account what he already has known/ learned) so if I were you I would not worry about supplementing too much after school, unless he will be asking for it.

 

I don't have daily reward system. I have a dry erase board chart(for summer) where I wrote what I expect my kids to do daily including reading, studying, foreign languages, music practice, skating(this one is not an everyday activity), cleaning etc. I keep track of their assignments within a day. They need to remember to check with chart to be sure they are not missing anything. If they forget to do something, all previous records are erased and they need to start from the beginning. For example, if my daughter forgot to study her French, all her previous achievements are cancelled and her records start from zero. If they keep it up within 3 months they are going to have something special (going to the game place or something else). I just started using this kind of reward system recently. My kids got reward stickers only for getting an excellent score for tests. I also used some stamps if their work needed some improvement. I also have few stamps such as “You aced it” and let them to stamp their work if it was a great job. They love it.

 

When my daughter was younger I used a point system when she got points for studying her subjects. Perfect work is 5 points and some deduction if it wasn’t perfect. At the end of the week she could exchange her points into different rewards: a book, stickers etc. I have different “value” rewards to choose from (a lollipop, bubblegum, a book, a computer game so it might take her a month before she could redeem her points ( a computer game was 2000 points). It taught her to “save” points to use them for something she really wanted. I might use this system again with my younger son if dry erase board system will not work for him.

 

At age 4, my daughter could do 4 hours of studying per day with 5-10 minutes brakes every 45 minutes or so. She didn't attend any school.

My son can study for first 45min-1 hour without any brakes, then he needs to be reminded to keep going every 15-20 minutes. I usually spend about 2 hours with him on his math/reading assignments in general. Sometimes it might be more if we are doing some other activities.

Edited July 23, 2010 by SneguochkaL