Motivating a 1st grader...

[George Mounce]

Could it be that he doesn't feel challenged? I was a bored kid, and since I was bored I would slack off because I thought it was boring. Maybe trying to find a way to tie things he is interested into his learning. So he has to spell some words. Add words to things he is interested into as a sort of extra credit. Teach the words in a method that they tie into something he likes.

Plenty of ways to skin that cat.

[Blair Lowe]

Or you could simply let him find words in an encyclopedia and have them tell you all about besides spelling it. I used to ransack my grandparents and my house for anything to read, especially encyclopedia volumes. Yes, I read the dictionary for fun besides thesaurus...I prized those things.

Gotta make it fun somehow, unless of course they are naturally driven which makes me think they tend to be troublesome looking up how to make gunpowder out of chemical sets and other boyish things to do.

[Jamila Bey]

Originally Posted by Patrick Donnelly

Church, athletics, and no rap music.



Worked for me. (Not a child of mine, but me myself.)

I got church, ballet class and I wasn't into rap, but my parents HATED my love of hard rock.

I am now an evangelical Atheist who will go to her grave ticked that mommy made me waste every weekend for a decade wearing pink... And I made my living as a music journalist for some time... True story- I actually got to meet a NUMBER of people I thought were cool just 'cause I was (an incredibly young looking) 20 year old who could go toe to toe with ANYONE on be-bop jazz history.

Look- your kid is in FIRST grade. Spelling isboring. Math isdumb. That's just the way it is. And the reason I plan to homeschool mine. What's fun about the teachers asking him to spell words and then spell EXTRA words? What's in it for him?

I admittedly AM a slacker, but I believe myself to be pretty darned successful when it comes to my own life...

Here's the thing. I loved gems and dinosaurs. My dad took me to the museum for fun and I learned to spell the stuff I liked. (I hated spelling too!) I loved to read, so I got biographies of people dad thought I should know. (How I got my Black History- 'cause Dad didn't like that I never learned about people who looked like me in my schools. Other than MLK, but that's a rant for later.)

After YEARS of Cs and Bs in math, I understood geometry and physics in a huge flash when I realized while playing pool what it means that "opposite adjacent angles are congruent." English is torque! Friction is different on different tables...

I wept to know that my sister's kid struggled with fractions. I kept him with me for a week and we cooked everyday. He ruined a batch of cookies because he couldn't add properly. By the end of the week he could divide and multiply fractions almost in his head.

Bottom line, your kid is fine. When he sees someone doing something cool that he likes, a doctor, metalworker, puppet master- IDK, then you say, "You too can do that, and talk him about the stuff he'll learn." He'll think it's fun.

Please don't make your child hate learning. The schools tend to do a good
enough job at that!

Off my soapbox.