One of the most worrying and frustrating things for Homeschool Teachers is the fact that while some of their homeschool students are great at self studying and well motivated to learn more, others couldn’t be bothered to pick up a book if they are not yelled at to do so. If your solution to getting them to study is to ban the TV and video games till they complete their lessons, trust me, you are not going to motivate them at all. In fact they will simply resent you and still not study the way they should. What then should you do to make them motivated self starters?
Figure Out What Interests Them
This is a no brainer and yet how many homeschool parents sit down and talk to their child about what their specific interests are? When learning about things related to what interests them children can be highly motivated learners. If its Star Wars they enjoy watching, try teaching them about the solar system, Milky Way galaxy and universe. They will be hunting for more information before you know it. Keep some time a day aside for listening to what interests them, it will change the way that you approach the homeschool lessons completely.
Let Them Set Targets and Become the Supervisor
Have your child decide exactly what he wants to study and how much time he wants to spend studying it. Give basic guidelines like 5 hours a day and three subjects. Have a comprehensive set of topics that the homeschool year needs to be utilized for per subject. Then leave it to the child to filter through the topics he wants to pay attention to that day. You begin to let go off active teaching and become their partner in education. They come to you to learn more about the things they want to study that day.
No Yelling and No Bribes
It is easy to loose your cool, but it will not motivate your children at all. On the other hand bribes can be very effective to get them to finish something on that particular day, but are not really a good way to help them discover self motivated learning. So avoid using them and instead find ways to motivate interest based learning for them.
