Motivation for an AL

[cyntheburb1]

Hello, I am in my second year of homeschooling my just-turned 6 year old. She's technically a kindergartener but she's easily doing first grade level work in reading and math, and is learning Spanish, geography, and history as well. My charter school rep said she's likely an AL. 

We are having difficulty with her attitude towards school. She seems unmotivated/disinterested in learning. My husband is an AL and he says its because she's not being properly challenged. But I am not certain. She gets into trouble at her co-op because she's spacing out and not paying attention, but she's not willing to put in the work to do the lessons like everyone else. When I or her co-op teacher challenge her with something and she finds its too difficult, she cries and gets upset. 

Does anyone have any suggestions for us? She's such a bright kid - she picks up on things so quickly, but she's more interested in being with her friends and playing, then in school. I would have expected something different from her, given how quickly she picks up on things. How can I motivate her? How can I help her WANT to learn?

 

[daijobu]

Do you have to do the co-op?  Can you instead do the academic learning at home and then meet up with friends for purely socializing?  

[Jackie]

Both boredom and resisting challenge are definitely possibilities for an AL.

if you can come up with ways to motivate an AL, please share. My daughter is working many years ahead of her age level, but she is only motivated by her own internal motivators, not by anything I can offer.

[8filltheheart]

Well, you are homeschooling and your child is 6. If you weren't going through a charter school, you could be wide open to different approaches that could be better fits for meeting your child's needs. I don't know what type of restrictions your charter puts on you, though.

Our homeschool doesn't look anything like a traditional school. We don't do co-ops. My goal for my younger kids is simply to nurture their internal motivation and desire to learn. No worries about sitting and staring off in space bc every single thing we do is tailored directly to their individual needs and interests. They do not need to conform to group levels bc none of their work is group focused.

Fwiw, being more interested in playing than school is natural and normal at 6, not a deficit or a problem. ? 

another fwiw, even with my most advanced kids, we only spend about 1to 1 1/2 hrs per grade level on school. So k is only about an hour total of seat work.  Elementary school ***never*** takes more than about 5 hrs even in 5th grade.  My advanced kids thrive and excel and graduate from high school at significantly advanced levels. More importantly, they are internally driven to succeed.

[4KookieKids]

I am in Jackie’s boat: have a kid like this, and external motivators just don’t work. She does the things she’s interested in, and pretty much dumps on everything else (very loudly and repeatedly). She’s come along a bit just as she matured, but I still never really know from week to week if she’s gonna just refuse her new violin assignment because one of the songs is annoying to her, despite loving the violin in general.

The only thing I’ve figured out so far is to expose her to a much wider range of stuff than I did with my first, in hopes that she might discover an interest in some obscure topic that I wouldn’t have guessed. 

She is very bright but completely lacking in goal-driven perseverance, and it’s not uncommon for her to completely quit her piano practice at the first mistake or want to smash her violin if she accidentally makes a scratchy sound. If she thinks she can’t be successful at something thenfirst time, she won’t even attempt it usually.

At this point, she pretty learns the things she cares about and dismisses everything else completely. We work on character a lot. 

Edited November 6, 2018 by 4KookieKids

[HomeAgain]

Things I have found:
-the usual order of things doesn't work.  It's why we blend Life of Fred with Right Start: RS gives practice after Fred hits it on speed, but he introduces more topics and in a different order than RS.  They balance each other well.
-application matters.  My kid isn't interested in learning something if he doesn't see the point.  He learned about biomes and life because it was made personal to him.  He sees the connections in Latin to English.  Music is danced to or played.  Robotics was an invitation to learn about physics...he needs to see why certain things are important if it's not immediately enjoyable.
-skills have to be considered.  My kid isn't a creative writer or finds it an easy task right now, so when a curriculum meets his input needs but doesn't consider his output limitations, it has to be reworked to find that middle level.
-he has to be involved.  I don't often make plans or changes without his input when it comes to his studies.  He gives feedback on what is/isn't working, and I take that and work it out.

Sometimes he does get frustrated.  I just think of it as an opportunity to build specific character traits: endurance, patience, tenacity...I cheer him on while being firm about what we're working on here.  I get him to that level, let it plateau a bit, and then as he sinks into a comfort zone I up the level just a little more again.

But bear in mind I'm speaking of an 8yo.  At just turned 6, most of his 'work' was through play still.  I introduced math concepts, but it was play.  I introduced writing and history and science and music and art....but it was all foundational play.  It is an important time for a kid and they should be setting the pace still with the parent 'strewing' ideas, games, and books to see what clicks.  It's the time of a kid's life when I think harder about my role and how I present the material: if I'm not interested and show my enthusiasm, my kid won't either.  And just because I do, doesn't mean he will be interested, but sharing something that interests me is better than teaching something to inform, you know?  Take her to museums, set time limits on work to keep it short and sweet, and slowly think about how you're building skills instead of creating layers.  I honestly think Charlotte Mason had a lot of brilliant ideas for this age between nature study and short lessons and good literature and handicrafts...it starts to build a confident, aware child.  And it's easy to manipulate the lessons to be the right level for your kid.

Edited November 6, 2018 by HomeAgain

[SanDiegoMom]

One issue could be level of output -- a lot of formal school (charter, public, online, etc) emphasize output over input, which is very frustrating to AL's who can comprehend higher level concepts but still will have grade level or even lower levels of output. For instance in our younger homeschooling years I emphasized reading higher level books (we usually averaged two hours a day of reading aloud) but their writing output was usually just a few sentences. NO worksheets, no spelling (they were natural spellers) No vocab except orally, -- they drew, they wrote a few sentences, and they did math, and we did fun projects like mythology trading cards, photosynthesis games, some crafts, acting out history scenes, etc.  Whereas in public school they did so many worksheets and wrote two page papers in first grade (!!). So it was far too much output That, combined with grade level input, ending up being a recipe for disaster.  So check if there is a mismatch between content and abilities.

 

[Jackie]

22 hours ago, cyntheburb1 said:

Hello, I am in my second year of homeschooling my just-turned 6 year old. She's technically a kindergartener but she's easily doing first grade level work in reading and math, and is learning Spanish, geography, and history as well. My charter school rep said she's likely an AL. 

We are having difficulty with her attitude towards school. She seems unmotivated/disinterested in learning. My husband is an AL and he says its because she's not being properly challenged. But I am not certain. She gets into trouble at her co-op because she's spacing out and not paying attention, but she's not willing to put in the work to do the lessons like everyone else. When I or her co-op teacher challenge her with something and she finds its too difficult, she cries and gets upset. 

Does anyone have any suggestions for us? She's such a bright kid - she picks up on things so quickly, but she's more interested in being with her friends and playing, then in school. I would have expected something different from her, given how quickly she picks up on things. How can I motivate her? How can I help her WANT to learn?

 

 

Does she want to be learning Spanish, history, and geography? If not, does she need to be learning these things right now? What does she want to learn? Can she learn those instead?

I missed the mention of a charter earlier. What type of charter? Something like K12, in which they decide upon and assign all the work? Or an independent one in which you decide on the materials and work? What limitations are you working within? If there are a lot of limitations, can you change this? We use a charter, but they require almost nothing of us, and the control is still primarily in my hands. I love it. OTOH, something like K12 or Connections Academy would be a very poor fit for my motivated-only-internally kid.

Is the co-op a good fit? We use an enrichment center, but generally only the nonacademic classes such as music, Lego, and robotics. It may be that outsourced academics aren’t the right fit for your kid at this time.

You asked about how to motivate your kid, but I would start by changing the environment to be as good of a fit as possible. And of course she’s more interested in being with her friends and playing. I’m 40 years old and I’m still more interested in being with my friends and playing most the time!

[pinewarbler]

12 hours ago, HomeAgain said:

I honestly think Charlotte Mason had a lot of brilliant ideas for this age between nature study and short lessons and good literature and handicrafts...it starts to build a confident, aware child.  And it's easy to manipulate the lessons to be the right level for your kid.

This.

I have 2 HG kids, now middle elem. & end of high school. They are both highly motivated, high achieving, happy learners. At age 6? Not so much.... they were motivated, just not to do what I wanted them to do :) Seriously, play-based lessons are completely appropriate for this age. I STILL play with my kids.... just finished building a crazy paper maché mask with my Grade 7  for Halloween. We are learning Python together and building our own video games. Despite their ages, we still have close connection because we played together all of those years. And my kids could see the real life application of what they were learning.

I taught both kids to read at a crazy young age by playing games. I had a goal to get them reading chapter books at the earliest age possible so that they could become their own teachers. They system I used didn't teach them the names of letters, only the sounds. We played bowling, for eg, where we had to sound out the pin we wanted to hit, and then hit it. Once they knew a few sounds, we played a game to glue them together to make words. Very soon they could read any CVC word and they never looked at a book, never mind a worksheet. Transitioning to reading from books didn't happen for more than a year, but it involved puppets. I spent that time reading very high level books to them so that their vocab and life experience continued to improve.

And I scribed for them so that they could write long stories and work on creativity w/o having to work on handwriting. The gap between their input and output can be huge, as mentioned above. I still scribed occasionally for my youngest as late as grade 3/4 if he wanted to write a tome. His handwriting is still not beautiful, but his writing is; it makes me cry! I worked with the school to allow him access to a computer any time a long piece of writing was needed. Immediately I got reports on how incredible his writing was :)

I think playing with my kids while teaching them taught me to listen to them more carefully than I would have naturally. It allowed me to follow their passions and keep them motivated. It taught me to see things in a new way. It made me hyper-aware of their asynchronous development and able to work at balancing it.

So much time is wasted in a school setting for lining up, waiting for everyone to be quiet, waiting for everyone to finish their work, waiting for the teacher to stop lecturing everyone on behaviour. I agree with 8FillTheHeart that early elementary could be done at home in an hour or so.

If I was to do any of it over again, I would have kept my kids out of kindergarten and kept taking them to museums (daytime programs for adults), studying nature, hiking and reading with them. They were beyond kindergarten, but kindergarten wasn't willing to meet them at a higher level. For grades 4-6, I took one kid out of school 2-4 times a month for nature study in the forest. Last year, it was at least once a week. Despite missing the most school in his grade, he won the academic award. I think that is the best validation that missing school for the right reasons works.

[Condessa]

I think that the best antidote for a young student who is disinterested/unmotivated in their learning is to let them learn what they want to learn.  It's okay if a six-year-old wants to spend all or most of her learning time on only her favorite subject.  I have found that when I set aside time and have materials ready, but then I let my young ones choose what and how much to do, they will often choose to work in waves--a few weeks of lots of math, or lots of reading, or lots of music, but when they get worn out on their current favorite, they switch to something else on their own.  (My exception to this is areas they consistently avoid because of great weaknesses or disabilities, but it doesn't sound like that applies to your daughter).  

Your charter may make it harder to be that flexible, but they may be willing to work with you.  When my older ds was five and desperate for cello lessons we couldn't afford without the charter school's help, he was academically advanced but immature and not at all ready to do measured, prescribed daily work across each subject.  The charter school representative said that so long as he consistently showed progress across the required subjects and we could show that he had done something each week for phonics, math, handwriting, science, and history, we could structure his learning time however we wanted.  There were many weeks when he spent hours and hours on his pet subject of the week, and did the barest minimum in the other subjects, but it really all balanced out pretty well in the end, and he grew and learned like a weed because he brought his full passion to each thing he was learning.  (Like, in a whole week, he might have done one brief phonics lesson from OPG, written "nimbus 2000" on a broomstick with a sharpie, watched an episode of the magic schoolbus, listened to me read a picture book relating to a historical topic while he played legos, practiced cello for 5 minutes per day on 5 days, and done 6 hours of math with me from a variety of sources, whatever he felt like each day.  Or he might have done 3 math questions that week and chosen to practice his cello three times a day for half an hour the whole week.)  Also, it's okay to let them do whatever level they want to, too.  If they want to skip ahead and then the extra challenge gets too much for them, they can choose to drop back and work at their earlier level for a while while they get a brain break.  Ds jumped ahead because he wanted to start Beast Academy, but he still goes back and works in the earlier level in Singapore sometimes when he needs a rest from the greater challenge.

It is really common for accelerated learners to get upset when confronted with something they don't know how to do.  When they are bright enough to get things without effort most of the time, coming up against something they don't know how to do can seem like an insurmountable barrier.  It is just a skill that takes practice, and the more they practice working at things that don't come automatically, the more that fine line between too easy/bored and too hard/melt down seems to widen.

I would pull her from the co-op if you have other alternatives for social interaction.  If an academic co-op is not meeting her needs academically and not something she is enjoying beyond the socialization, it seems like there are better ways to get that for her.

Edited November 12, 2018 by Michelle Conde

[Donna]

On 11/12/2018 at 3:31 PM, Michelle Conde said:

I think that the best antidote for a young student who is disinterested/unmotivated in their learning is to let them learn what they want to learn.  It's okay if a six-year-old wants to spend all or most of her learning time on only her favorite subject.  I have found that when I set aside time and have materials ready, but then I let my young ones choose what and how much to do, they will often choose to work in waves--a few weeks of lots of math, or lots of reading, or lots of music, but when they get worn out on their current favorite, they switch to something else on their own.  (My exception to this is areas they consistently avoid because of great weaknesses or disabilities, but it doesn't sound like that applies to your daughter).  

Your charter may make it harder to be that flexible, but they may be willing to work with you.  When my older ds was five and desperate for cello lessons we couldn't afford without the charter school's help, he was academically advanced but immature and not at all ready to do measured, prescribed daily work across each subject.  The charter school representative said that so long as he consistently showed progress across the required subjects and we could show that he had done something each week for phonics, math, handwriting, science, and history, we could structure his learning time however we wanted.  There were many weeks when he spent hours and hours on his pet subject of the week, and did the barest minimum in the other subjects, but it really all balanced out pretty well in the end, and he grew and learned like a weed because he brought his full passion to each thing he was learning.  (Like, in a whole week, he might have done one brief phonics lesson from OPG, written "nimbus 2000" on a broomstick with a sharpie, watched an episode of the magic schoolbus, listened to me read a picture book relating to a historical topic while he played legos, practiced cello for 5 minutes per day on 5 days, and done 6 hours of math with me from a variety of sources, whatever he felt like each day.  Or he might have done 3 math questions that week and chosen to practice his cello three times a day for half an hour the whole week.)  Also, it's okay to let them do whatever level they want to, too.  If they want to skip ahead and then the extra challenge gets too much for them, they can choose to drop back and work at their earlier level for a while while they get a brain break.  Ds jumped ahead because he wanted to start Beast Academy, but he still goes back and works in the earlier level in Singapore sometimes when he needs a rest from the greater challenge.

It is really common for accelerated learners to get upset when confronted with something they don't know how to do.  When they are bright enough to get things without effort most of the time, coming up against something they don't know how to do can seem like an insurmountable barrier.  It is just a skill that takes practice, and the more they practice working at things that don't come automatically, the more that fine line between too easy/bored and too hard/melt down seems to widen.

I would pull her from the co-op if you have other alternatives for social interaction.  If an academic co-op is not meeting her needs academically and not something she is enjoying beyond the socialization, it seems like there are better ways to get that for her.

 

I didn't have time to read all the responses but was going to post something very similar to this.

You are homeschooling and it does not have to resemble school at all!

There is no need for sitting to learn.  Play based, active, hands on learning is perfect at this age.

Ask her what she is interested in learning. For science, grow some plants experimenting on growing conditions, explore the woods and sketch some of the plants she sees, talk about animals and where they live and what they eat, talk about geography by looking at rocks and minerals, make an outdoor model of the solar system to scale, make a paper model of the bones of the human body, do "experiments" on how exercise affects heart rate and breathing. Play with manipulatives for math...a child can learn addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and many other concepts through play without it even feeling like work. Read books on subjects she shows an interest and go off on tangents when needed. Have her tell stories and record them so she can later go back and work on writing them out. Do art projects or try out recipes based on fiction books you read with her. (Cooking and baking are great ways to learn fractions. btw)