Other parents were talking in another forum about needing to start a whole new thread on persuading a child to love math…gosh, I feel like I have been doing this all year. lol. Without any shame, I will tell you one thing that I have done to create and foster a love for math. CANDY!!!
My children rarely saw the candy but three times a year, and for the sake of math loving kids, I threw my fears aside. My kids didn’t have any interest in counting dry pasta noodles after the first five times, and pulling out counters that looked anything like a toy…well you might as well give up before you start because their imagination doesn’t need much inspiration to start their own imaginative story with colorful counters. I tried every kind of manipulative, and I lost them usually after 1 minute. You can not get a lot of counting done this way. So one day (when dad the candy police was not around), I pulled out chocolate chips from the pantry, and thus began our counting journey. Solve a problem and earn candy. I know, I know, they should just love learning without bribing, but can’t it work the other way around? Well, I will tell you that it did. Now they count everything and everywhere. They love to count and it doesn’t take candy to get them inspired anymore. In fact, I haven’t pulled out candy in a week.
So now that we have conquered counting, is it all gravy in the math world for us? Nope! I am still inventing new ways or finding new ways to inspire some math love. Lately, I have been using the dot matrix which I will say has made my four year old happy to do a math worksheet now. My 3 year old gets a little distracted in learning this and prefers not to really practice it at all. Last weekend, I decided to revamp “Candy Land” by placing a dot matrix problem on each card to solve in order to move to the colored space on the card. I found other great ideas for more “Candy Land” fun on pinterest. You can even find printable cards to buy for $3 each on teacherspayteachers.com that vary in topic like telling time, shapes, etc. Once you kid knows their colors, you find yourself not so happy to pull out Candy Land. Now, I think of several reasons why. My three year old just loves Candy Land, so she was happy to add and subtract to move through the fantastical land of candy.
I also started Jump Math which I love because there are plenty of games in it to get my kids excited.
So what works for you to inspire a love of math in your too-busy-to-do-math kid? Or maybe you need help to brainstorm?
I agree with this method. We like fruit snacks and M&M’s and popcorn. I have no shame - I’m a briber. We count M&M’s, we also count cheerios (they provide only a minimal incentive unless I get out the Cheerio counting book), chocolate chips, jelly beans. I like all of these because they can easily be made into common patterns for substitizing.
I am anxious to see what other parents are doingl I am glad I came out of the bribery closet. I can breathe now. It was getting so stuffy in there.
Creaking the closet door slightly open, I’ll share my idea. Shhh…
When I TEST (that’s another closet I hide in sometimes) Dolch words, my son gets a penny for each word. When we’re done testing (I don’t retire a word until he’s read it 3 times in a row, no blips) we count up the pennies putting them into groups - two rows of five pennies. Whatever is remaining goes into a ziploc “wallet” to be counted into the next time’s results and put aside. Once the groups are all set out, we exchange the groups of five pennies for nickels - so now we have groups that have two nickels each. Then, we exchange the two nickels from each group for a dime. Finally, we count up how much money he has and he can buy chocolate chips from me. Get this part - one chocolate chip costs him 10 cents! Tee Hee… So, he now has a good sense of the value of nickels and dimes…he just hasn’t figured out that he’s doing a stinking lot of work for a tiny little chocolate! Bwaa Haa Haa
We do lots of fun math games. James actually loves math. But he can be a “lazy” (for want of a better word) boy and he likes math to always be easy. So we get stuck, or we plateau a lot. So sometimes to introduce a new concept, or to challenge him a little we bribe.
Out come the m&ms. we call this m&m math. And it is the only time he ever gets them. Sometimes we do it several times a week, sometimes it is weeks, or like now several months since we have used them. And he loves the little treats. And he sees that sometimes to get a reward he has to do some hard work. Not everything good is easy.
James actually learnt to subtitize with cheeseballs. I would put some in the palm of my hand. And he couldn’t eat them until he could subtitize them correctly. We did this one afternoon and voila. He learnt to subtitize up to five with ease. And we have never used cheeseballs again.
Yes, I know that the reward, bribe thing is bad, especially with food. But considering he eats extremely healthy 90% of the time and he has no idea what juice, desserts, snack cakes, candy (except m&ms) are, I think he is fine.
We are vegetarian, with a very healthy diet, but it IS important to teach about all things in moderation…
We have been known to use the occasional mini M&M or jellybean as a reward for exceptional reasoning! And, of course, she goes wild for those occasions!
But she is also DESPERATE to obtain STARS! Don’t get me wrong, this took a quite a bit of work! At first, I put a brightly colored cupful of multicolored sharpies on the counter, where she could see them but not reach…I informed her they were for ‘special stars’ that had to be earned…no, she couldn’t have one, they definitely had to be ‘earned’!
Oooh, I See! She wanted to ‘earn a star!’ Well, they were earned by hard work and learning only, so when she was ready, she could let me know!
She kept begging, and I kept reiterating. Finally, she was exceptionally patient whilst I was on the phone, so she ‘earned’ a star in the color of her choice, drawn on her hand…She was SOOOOO proud!
We have elevated these stars as rewards far superior to mini- M&Ms and high-fives…these work well, don’t get me wrong, not above abit of bribery if she is having a particularly recalcitrant day!
And the best bit?!!!
The very last thing we do before bed is to count her stars, as a family, and recount what great accomplishments and especially hard-work she has achieved that day…so she goes to bed every night dreaming about the hard work and learning she has achieved, rather than reliving the times she got into trouble!!!
I love it Keri!
We aren’t huge sticker fans here. James doesn’t go gaga over them. And I don’t like cleaning them up after they fall off him. And stickers run out.
I have thought about how I used to love the smiley stamps I used to get on my hand in school. To this day they still make me smile. And i love remembering how many i had all over my school work. I had been planning to get stamps like that for James at sme point. But I love the idea of using colored sharpies!
I am so glad to find I’m not alone in the closet lol
I’ve been reflecting a lot recently about what gets in the way of my DD learning. I have concluded that emotion plays a big role. I think when something feels challenging then she gets easily overwhelmed by emotion and gets angry or shuts down. Either way the learning stops.
I have held off rewards for a long time after being scared of losing her love of learning (all the Punished by Rewards stuff is very powerful). But I am finding that rewards do help provide some immediate focus and I also really emphasise praise for her effort. Wow you tried really hard and you didn’t give up… Well done…
For piano, which was an even bigger struggle, I have brought in a structured reward system as suggested by Hellene from Soft Mozart. I made a reward chart with 10 spaces numbered 1-10 and some fun cards (cupcakes and butterflies). She earns from 1-3 cakes for each piece or piano game she plays, depending on effort put in. Then when she gets to 10 she earns a present out of our new present bag. This contains lots of very small presents (but no food here - saving that for maths ). Pencils, small note pads, stickers, etc. The fun is opening and finding a surprise. I also use this to give her educational toys I would probably given anyway (e.g. A sheet of magnetic numbers was MUCH more exciting when it came out of the present bag!!!). I also put in books if I have some new ones to share.
So that is working so far but I don’t want to introduce rewards for everything! I tried stickers today to encourage her to try some of the Eurotalk maths app that she’s yet to try (she likes repeating the same section over and over!!) and it seemed to work well. I am resigned to having stickers everywhere including finding them in the washing machine. I bought a budget pack of 1000 from eBay that should last a while. But whether this will continue I don’t know.
I will definitely look at using more food for manipulatives though…
I have just been thinking a lot about motivation! I think it came from reading a book on dog training, silly as that is. The author points out that as humans, we need motivation to do things. If you don’t find dog training an intrinsically rewarding experience, she says, reward yourself for doing it. Of course, it goes on to how to reward your dog, but my attention was caught by that point. I use rewards for myself quite a bit. You could say that a clean house ought to be intrinsically motivating, but if that was my only reason for cleaning, it’d be a pigpen! But if I tell myself, “Once you’re done cleaning you can pop popcorn and sit down and read a book while you eat it,” the house gets clean. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
However, when it comes to kids, I’ve definitely read enough people that claim it’s bad. So, as Izp said, I’m a little conflicted over using them, especially for learning. Now I can’t remember details of why people think it’s bad. And it certainly works! We count things and eat them; she started reading when I gave her treats for each word. We don’t get dessert after dinner unless we clean up the house first. And if I want her to go potty before we leave and she says she doesn’t need to, she’s offered a candy for sitting and trying.
Is this really all that bad? I gave up the treats for reading, and now we don’t read any more. It seems to me that reading for treats is better than not reading at all. And she loves to be read to, so once she gets over the hurdle of blending, which is so hard for her, I think the treats will disappear and she’ll read to herself. I can’t imagine it permenantly impacting her potty habits, and like I said, I motivate myself to clean using food. But I still have this vague feeling of “Bad Mom!”
I’m definitely going to try the stars and subitizing treats. Those are great ideas; thanks, everybody! And I’ll continue counting and doing other math with food. It’s where food doesn’t fit naturally, like reading, that I worry more. What do you all think?
I worried about the treat incentives initially, But we seldom use them. The are just used to get over a hurdle. Then we phase them out. I figure at 2 he most likely wont remember the few times that we bribed him. But I do also worry about it when he is older.
Ideally, I want things that James does to become more like a habit. I stress the importance of hard work, not smarts. And it is expected that he reads and does math every day. And honestly it works, (for now?) Infact days that he doesn’t do reading or math, like when I was Seck recently, he was extremely upset about it.
I have another closet that I’m hiding in relating to maths…
I know that learning for under fives is meant to be joyful at all times and always stop before the child wants to. I try so so hard to make math fun and enjoyable, using games and inspiration from all the lovely parent on this forum.
BUT… for us maths is frequently not especially joyful. I always keep each activity brief but I often have to work so hard to keep her attention to finish. Sometimes this can be quite frustrating for me - I try really hard not to let this show but it’s tough on days when every fun suggestion I make is met with no no no.
I know if I even raised this issue outside the forum the answer would be that she’s too young and stop. But that feels wrong to me too. She shows great aptitude to learn when she does focus.
She also does love reading but sometimes can’t quite be bothered to finish a book she has started. Again I do try to encourage her to finish as long as the material is within her capabilities as I don’t want her to always give up when things get tough. But thus does seem to go a bit against the joy of it all. It’s such a hard balance and I often feel I’m not quite getting it right.
Before I was an EL junkie, we used rewards not as “rewards” but as payment. My children don’t get paid to do chores. That is part of being in our family. I don’t get paid to cook or wash laundry. They don’t get paid to clean rooms. But we do pay. My reasoning goes like this - as a Christian the principle is that “If you don’t work, you don’t eat.” I have a job, my husband has a job, my children have jobs. Their job is to learn. It is to learn to work hard, put for effort, to accomplish goals. While I don’t pay for chores I pay for things over and above the chores. I don’t pay very well, but I do pay. I also expect my children from a young age to pay for certain things and that gets to be more and more as they get older. I do not pay for my oldest’s shampoo, toothpaste, car repairs, phone, car insurance, clothing, etc. That comes out of his paycheck. If he fails to do chores he is fined and that also comes out of his paycheck.
I started my oldest on this plan when he was three. At three all he was expected to pay for were things like birthday and Christmas presents for others and if he wanted anything in between birthdays and Christmas he has to pay for it himself. We started reading when he was three and there were “additional” things he could do to earn money up to $15 a month. My son is a tightwad and very, very good with money. Though we have had some tough learning experiences along the way. But they cost us little as he was 14/15 at the time. I guess I feel that I wouldn’t stay in a job where I didn’t get paid. I want my kids to learn to love learning, but it is their full-time job right now. So, I pay for it. I also pay for things like working hard at music lessons etc. Anything where he is the primary beneficiary he gets paid to do. I have a limit of what I am willing to give him each month and that is spread among different activities.
Now that I am a EL junkie, I have adapted a program for my 2 y/o. He works to earn “learning money” - this is separate from counting with M&M’s. We put some cool stickers on old cardboard game pieces and these we use as “coins”. If we go to violin lessons and he pays attentions and does what his teacher says he earn coins - right there as he is performing the proper task. If he works hard at math or reading he earns more. Right now all he can do is turn them in for fruit snacks, watching Kipper, going to the park. Things like that. I don’t think this is bad. I also reward myself for the things I do. We all do. I want my son to realize there are blessings in a job well done, not just the satisfaction, but other blessings as well, including the ability to provide for oneself. And this teaches them how to handle money from the time they are very little. And, I never have to ask my oldest to do his chores. I just write how much he is fined for not doing them, and after one or two times of that, there never needs to be another reminder that it is Friday and the garbage needs to go out.
You know, your post reminded me of Zoihaib and Wahib, those mathy Asian-Brit boys, who got A levels at very young ages. Their father said he pays them 25 pence for each hour of math. He mentioned that that is how they earned their pocket money. So rather than giving them maybe £15 pocket money per month for free, he simply pays them 25p for each hour of well-done math, and they can accumulate ‘their salary’ to whatever amount they want depending on how hard they’ve worked. (Remember, 25p x 4 = £1, so 4 hours of good math earns the kid £1). It does make sense somehow and I was thinking of implementing such a reward system for my kids when the time is right. Your thoughts?
I pay way more than that. But I also expect more. This isn’t just pocket money. I am not paying for much this year and next year I will pay for nothing. I don’t even pay for co-pays at the Dr. office or trips to the emergency room (because we failed to tell mother we had an ear ache on Friday when the Dr. office was open :mad: ). You are going to have to figure the tipping point for your child. In principle I agree with this. They are working, it is work, and work is a blessing with attendant rewards which include monetary rewards. I just know there is no way my son would do 4 hours extra work for $1. he’d laugh at me and get out his guitar.
Thanks for your response, Sonya. I guess the idea of rewards is a more complicated than I thought. I makes me wonder - if I use this particular reward, will it make the child dependent on the rewards for learning? As the child grows, will he/she demand more of the reward to learn? For example, if I pay him 25 pence per 1 hour of math, will he later demand £25 per 1 hour of math? lol . So many questions and unknowns.
I don’t see that there is a problem with learning when we reward - I don’t like to call it a reward as I see it it is a paycheck for a job. This right now is their job. They need to work hard at it. I have a base pay and then I do reward ( or as we call it, give bonuses) for going above and beyond what it required. I don’t do this all the time, so my child never knows when he is going to get a bonus. Sometimes we give a bonus at Christmas, sometimes not. It is nothing he can count on. Recently, he needed to get new tires for his car. He only needed front tires, but the back ones were going to need replacing as well and the car is safer with all new tires. So, He told me how much money he had planned to spend, I offered to not quite double the amount if he agree to spend it on getting back tires also. He had to decide if my help was worth it to him.
I guess, you need to think about what you are trying to accomplish with “rewards”. I wanted my child to learn to manage money, be creative, figure out what needed to be done and do it, and realize that the surest way to make money is to work. Next year will be a transition year for him. I will not pay for anything. He is also working at a job making pretty decent money for a kid. He knows that all of this is on his shoulders 3 months after he graduates. We;ve been preparing for this transition since he was 3. I’m not using this just to get him to perform. But if he didn’t perform he’d be fined. So, money is a great motivator. But it is for all of us.
My husband once said, “If there is no reward, why would a smart kid want to do it?” Little kids have a hard time understanding the intrinsic rewards of academic work, so if we can help them along the way, great.
My son want Lego Star Wars. Really bad. This has worked so far for us, but he’s starting to realize how much work we are asking of him for it- ie, finish a book and get a $20 ish prize. Maybe we’ll buy it, and incrementally give him the components.
My kids also know that they will get no computer time until he finishes his kitchen-table school, so that has been a motivator for him as well.
All your great ideas on rewards has been really inspiring. I finally sat down this weekend and came up with a reward system for school work and activities to keep my kids motivated and excited to do more. I need a system to keep me and the kids straight. Three little ones and one big kid can be a lot to keep up with every day. I created a Sticker store to redeem stickers (a list of activities with a sticker cost) on a daily, weekly, monthly and semester basis and a sticker chart to keep up with the stickers and the value of certain activities. I gave certain activities like math games and reading a book a higher sticker value. I too have trouble getting my little ones to practice reading an entire book (even one that is a few pages). We cover seven subjects with one activity for each and each subject earning a sticker when completed (short ten minute activities), and then I came up with bonus activities to earn bonus stickers like worksheets and stuff.
I can’t give out money on a weekly basis, monthly or semester, but I did come up with some fun ideas that are more about making an everyday occasion special like movie night with popcorn (we rarely watch movies), a pizza (homemade of course) party and an ice cream party. Funny how you can throw a party at the end of something and it makes it so much more special. lol I even came up with a chore system without rewards so that we become a little more consistent on that front. Here is hoping it that the rewards are exciting enough to keep me on my sticker game.
It’s great to hear everyone’s ideas and how they have adapted to suit different kids.
I’ve been using rewards more lately. I read up on them online and the problem is that they can become addictive and potentially devalue learning because the kids are automatically less interested in an activity when they see that they need to be rewarded to do it. I also read a criticism which said that although many people say that the rewards are removed in time, that this often does not happen.
However, for us, the benefits largely do outweigh the problems because I’m not convinced my DD will ever spontaneously be doing much in the way of maths so anything we can do is a bonus!
Having said that, I have noticed after a week or so of rewarding using the Eurotalk maths app (a sticker for every new activity she tries - these are actually fairly straightforward for her but she is not keen to try the newer ones without encouragement), I see some possible signs of “addiction”. Firstly, she values the stickers a bit less. She’s asking for bigger and bigger ones and being less interested in choosing a smaller one! I’ve said the big stickers are for when she earns a certificate in the app by completing the entire level. I tried to manage this by saying, “OK, no sticker today? No problem…” and then of course she wants one. This kind of reverse psychology feels a bit manipulative (which is another criticism of rewards). Although are we really supposed to feel bad about helping our children find ways to enjoy learning!!!
I tried offering a sticker to do her rightstart when she was not really in the mood. This didn’t really help as she still did not concentrate well. but I think she was just very tired that day and perhaps I should have been better able to read her mood. I have decided to leave off rewarding this for the moment and try to find ways to enthuse her through the activity itself. Yesterday I put on an oscar winning performance when teaching odds and evens, jumping the two fingers together onto pairs of dots and then the finger that didn’t get one for odd numbers was devastated and howled with crying, while the other finger giggled hysterically lol lol It must have looked crazy from the outside but in 5-10 minutes she had completely got the concept and was able to pick odd or even using the cards.
We have several different reward systems that we flip between or use for different activities and I do find that mixing things up helps a lot. I’m thinking about rewarding different activities at a time, so perhaps a month for the app, then switch to something else. So not allowing her to get bored or complacent! And being very firm. For soft mozart she earns one cardboard cupcake for playing and piece and another one for singing solfege along with it. Yesterday, she decided to sing all the completely wrong notes just for fun, and wondered why she could not have two cakes!!
I also like the idea for the future of having to earn privileges such as pocket money but we are not quite yet at the stage of money meaning much more than fun coins to play with!!
But I would really appreciate any advice on how people have managed to maintain enthusiasm for learning over time whilst using rewards. Thanks for all the ideas and inspiration!
we call this m&m math. And it is the only time he ever gets them. Sometimes we do it several times a week, sometimes it is weeks, or like now several months since we have used them. And he loves the little treats. And he sees that sometimes to get a reward he has to do some hard work. Not everything good is easy.
). Pencils, small note pads, stickers, etc. The fun is opening and finding a surprise. I also use this to give her educational toys I would probably given anyway (e.g. A sheet of magnetic numbers was MUCH more exciting when it came out of the present bag!!!). I also put in books if I have some new ones to share.