Homework

My 8-year-old stepson is struggling in school. He is a really smart boy, but he is not at all interested in school. He would much rather be visiting with his friends or outside playing basketball. He is really physical and athletic – definitely all boy. It is a constant struggle to get him to sit down and focus on something “boring” like math or reading.

We have started printing out extra homework sheets for him to work on. At night, after he does his “regular” homework, if he wants to play video games he has to do some extra worksheets. Each worksheet earns him 15 minutes of video game time. (I try to get worksheets that take him at least 15 minutes to get through.) This has had two benefits – he plays less video games in general (because sometimes it is too much work to do homework first … so he will just go do something else instead… ) and it actually has him ASKING to do homework. We don’t have to fight him to do homework, instead he volunteers. Amazing.

This year I have even been wishing we had the ability to home school (not an option for us for a variety of reasons – custody, money, etc.). I admit I am generally kind of a skeptic of home schoolers … I just imagine myself as a child – already shy and quiet – if I were home schooled I would have been deathly afraid of people and would have had no friends. (And also … who are these parents with endless patience and ability to get their kids to actually listen to them? I am all about instant gratification. And teaching is not at all instant gratification – you don’t see results for a long time in most cases. That would be really hard for me. And also there is the whole fact that my kids will listen to ANYONE but me it seems … but I digress.) But with Dayton, the social aspects would not be an issue. I have never met a more social, outgoing, friendly child in my life. He could actually benefit from LESS socialization. I am becoming less skeptical of parents who choose to home school. (Don’t yell at me if you are a home schooler – I actually don’t really know any families closely that home school so I admit I have a very uninformed opinion of the issue … I fully believe there are tons of families out there who successfully and happily home school – I just don’t know any and I think it would be incredibly hard to make it a successful, positive experience.)

Anyways … for now we have to settle for extra homework practice whenever we get the chance. And our incentive program has magically been helping. I made up some worksheets for Dayton to practice counting by 3s, 4s, 6s and 7s. I am going to make them available as a free download for any one else who may want to use them for practice. I think I will start a series of these … any worksheets that I find are helping our kids will be available here for anyone who wants to use them!

Here they are, just click the links for the worksheets:

Second Grade Math: Counting by 3s and 4s
Second Grade Math: Counting by 6s and 7s