Idea for Motivation - How to Be Consistent

I can't believe how fast time flies. It's now March. I was not able to blog much for the last two months because of some frustrating issues, which I will talk about in another blog post.

For now, I would like to talk about the fast approaching summer vacation. It's just one month to go and the kids' schooling will be over. My kids and I will just be staying home most of the time. Of course, we will plan to go somewhere to relax once in a while. But mostly, we'll just be at home.

I'm thinking in advance of things the kids can do at home. Just like the past summer vacations, they can enroll in a free online learning program, read a book and summarize it, help in doing home chores or engage in a hobby like cross stitching or painting.

But I would like them to be more consistent in doing those activities. Because it takes repetition and consistency to make any activity really productive. What often happens is there's excitement at the start of the activity, but after some time, the kids lose interest. So, the project is not finished or the goal is not reached.

Do you have any idea on how to motivate them?

Here's an idea that involves making a Summer Bar Graph. Find below the mechanics of doing it.

Draw some educational value out of a summer stocked full of adventures! Using a simple bar graph, your child will get to keep track of all her fun activities. She won't even realize she's getting invaluable math practice in the bargain!

What You Need:

• Notebook
• Pen or pencil
• Crayons

What You Do:

1. In preparation for this activity, keep a small notebook at your child’s bedside. Before bed each night, ask her to list what she’s done that day, from swimming in the pool to singing along with the radio -- anything and everything that she feels worthy of remembering. Do this for one week.
2. When the week is over, help her total up the various activities.
3. Have her draw the axes for a simple bar graph. Along the bottom axis, help her list the activities. Now number the side axis. Make sure the numbering goes high enough to count whatever activity she did the most.
4. How many times did she do the first activity? Have her draw a bar for that on the graph that reaches to the appropriate number. Repeat, using a different color, for each activity.
5. Now that she has made the graph, help her understand what it shows by asking her which activity she did the most, the least, and if any were done with the same frequency. Which activity does she wish had the tallest bar? 

A possible variation of this activity is to create a chore bar graph. Whenever your child completes her chores, she can fill in the bar graph. You can tell her that when the bar reaches high enough, she'll get to do another one of her fun summer activities or perhaps she can get a reward. Now that's some tangible motivation for getting chores done!

What do you think of this activity? Do you think it will help?