3 Great Ways to Motivate Your Child During Learning Sessions
You spend time researching fun preschool activities, gather all of the materials and call your child to the table. You might even start off with: “Come try this new game!” But to your disappointment, they are just not interested. “I want to play with my toys” they say.
Working on educational activities is important. How can you motivate your child to participate?
Here are three ideas.
1. Use A Reward Chart
Reward charts have small removable pieces usually held on by hook and loop fasteners. The child starts with an empty board. As they work through an activity, they earn the pieces for participation. Once they fill up the board, they get a small reward such as a 5 minutes playing with bubbles or a cracker. Tip: We recommend using small rewards such as one chocolate chip or one cracker for filling up the board instead of a handful of chocolate chips or crackers. If you give your child too much of a reward at a time, they will be happily eating all of the chocolate chips and will not be motivated to complete the activity.
Reward charts work well for activities of any length because your child can fill up the board repeatedly during longer activities. This type of system works well for preschoolers of any age, but it especially works well for younger children who need more frequent affirmation.
2. Fill Up a Container with Small Items
Do you have small items such as tiny shells or squishy pom poms around the house? Get a small jar and have your child earn items like these as they work through an activity. When the jar is full, they get a reward like a small cookie or some of their favorite fruit. If you’d rather not use food for a reward, you can have your child earn time doing something they love, such as playing a special game with you. Depending on the difficulty of the activity, your child can earn 1 pom pom, a couple or even a handful at a time!
For example, your child is practicing writing letters. You can tell them something like this: “These are some pom poms that you can earn for writing your letters. When you fill up this jar, we get to play this fun, new game.”
If your child is working on a letter that is easy for them, you could give them one pom pom per letter. If they are working on a letter that is harder for them, double it and give them two for each letter. If they write a letter especially neatly and correctly, get really excited and give them a handful of pom poms! By varying the amount of pom poms earned, you are creating excitement and motivating your child to try their best even at an activity that they may not particularly enjoy.
This type of reward system works well for activities that require longer participation times because you can keep your child engaged by varying the amount of items that they earn. Your child can fill up the jar throughout an entire day or even throughout a week if you use a bigger jar. Reward systems like this are best for older preschoolers because it is easier for them to wait for the jar to fill up.
Note: The amount of small items needed depends on how fast you anticipate that your child will fill up the jar. If you want your child to fill up the jar during a ten-minute activity, you may want to use around 50 pieces, especially if you plan to give handfuls periodically. If you want your child to fill up the jar by the end of the day, you might want to have a couple hundred pieces available.
Items suggestions include: pom poms, small plastic chips/circles, small items like tiny shells, or even dried beans.
Do not choose this type of reward system if your child puts items in their mouth. Constant parental supervision is required.
3. Take Turns
Some children may feel like a certain activity is too overwhelming. Take some of the pressure off by taking turns participating. For example, if your child is practicing letter recognition by finding all of the A’s on a page, tell them, “You find one and I’ll find one”. By working on the activity together, your child sees that you are on their “team” and is often more motivated to do the activity.
You shouldn’t take turns with every activity, but it is effective when used sparingly for those times when your child needs extra encouragement with more difficult tasks.
When it comes to motivating your child to do activities that they would rather not participate in, using rewards systems can be a game changer. You can also change up the rewards periodically so that you can keep your child’s interest. For example, one day, your child can earn a cookie for a reward and the next day, they can get some time on the tablet.
