Friday, October 26, 2007

Motivating kids to do stuff

I wanted to post about a couple of great ideas my sister has:

My sister has started a 'boys only" bookclub for her sons (she has 4). My nephew was nearly held back in 1st grade because of reading. Now 4 years later (5th grade) he is reading on a 8th grade level.
She has lots of ideas- one was she asked them questions about the book- for every right answer the boys got a water balloon for the water fight they had later. So they were highly motivated to read the book ;0)

Anyway, here is the link for you-
www.bookclub4boys.com

She is also interested in any feedback you have (can post or pm me)

She also does a 'fitness club competition' with her kids- they split up into 2 teams and throughout the week get points for exercise, drinking water, etc. Winning team gets to pick dessert for family night- but it is the competition that really motivates them. It was totally funny to me to hear my nephew tell his dad he 'really needed to step it up on his vegetables' ;0)

5 comments:

Emily said...

Ok, here are a few ideas from me.

We played 'conference bingo' last session of general conference. It really made a difference in paying attention. We made a board of 5x5 and filled it in with words like 'family, promise, mother, earth, blessings..' Each person wrote their own words on their gameboard. The center square was AMEN (which is a lot like a freebie). If you were zoning out and missed a word you didn't get to count it (you had to hear it yourself) Actually, I'm pretty sure I stole this idea from my sister too.

This one is mine. We made a chore chart- usually just a list of 9 chores because we happen to have a 9 sided die. Zac loves this. He rolls the die and then if he gets a 5 he has to do whatever chore is chore #5. Some of them can be done more than once if he rolls it more than once (clean your room 15 minutes) Sometimes I put a freebie on there (give mom a kiss!) One of them is usually 'mom's choice' which sometimes is to clean out the car, watch Max, vacuum under the couch, whatever I don't want to do)

And then there is my controversial deal for not watching TV. The kids do not watch TV during the school year (including weekends). At the end of the school year they get $100. Yes, it is a bribe. But I count it as the best $100 I've ever spent. They are allowed to watch tv on spring break and winter break, but are out of the habit so really don't watch much at all then either.

Kathy said...

Those are great ideas! I'll be referring back to this in a little while. Thanks, Emily!

happytape! said...

i love all your ideas!! will you be my mentor??

happytape! said...

i love all your ideas!! will you be my mentor??

Stepi said...

Hey! great ideas. I think we need to continue lots of comments on this once we get ideas.

We have started a boys book club all from Laura's idea. They are meeting for the first time at my house this Thursday and I was planning on looking at her site again so I would know what to do. We read the book "Homer Price" and I think we will make dounuts for one of the activities.

I'll have to think of some other ideas to post!