Homework Tip That’s a Real HIT!

Many of you know I’m completely smitten with boys.  Mine especially :o).   I love girls too – I just don’t have any…

…except Dixie – but that’s a different story…

So in a never ending quest to find the best ways to grow, motivate, teach, and shape my boys into the amazing men I know they’ll be in the future, I, like you, am always on the lookout for great ideas to help me…

And I found one today.

If your little boys are like mine – ACTIVE, ACTIVE, CRAZY ACTIVE – they resist (and flat out resent) dull, repetitive, boring, homework – like practicing math facts, spelling words and the like – especially after sitting for nearly seven hours under school duress.

Frankly for my squirmy, basketball playing, tree climbing, pogo stick jumping, bathroom noise making, Lego building, wrestling, ants in your pants type of boys – any homework of this type can just be a total grind!  Especially as we move into spring…

So we’ve tried racing challenges, contests, verbal quizzing en route to school to use up our car ride time, and frankly we’re running low on interest…

So if your boys (kids) are feeling like mine, I found a great tool that helped change it up a bit in our house that I thought could work for you too – at least til April or so… :o) :o) :o).

And here it is…

Thanks to my FB friends, I was made aware of a great resource for parents with boys called BuildingBoys.net.  On this blog by Jennifer Fink, I found a plethora of great ideas and discussions on, well…boys.

THANK YOU JENNIFER!

One of these ideas was NERF GUN MATH FACTS and man has it been a HIT (get it?) in our house!

I just used a write on/wipe off board, wrote various math facts on it, along with four answer choices.  The boys stood with their loaded NERF guns in hand behind a line.  I read out the math facts one at a time along with the answer choices and then my 1st grader enthusiastically scc–reamed out the answer and shot at the target!

Voila!

Fun Boy (kid) Math Fact Practice.  And, I’m sure there are other great ways to execute this (SPELLING WORDS come to mind)…

…and maybe for girls they’d like to dress up as their favorite princess and HIT it with a magic wand spell or something???  Honestly when I comes to girls I have no idea (sigh), but maybe it’s worth a try….

Anyway, we “practiced” in a variety of ways…slowly, quickly, in order, mixed up, and we made new number sentences, and the best thing is – they ASKED when we can do it again.  Ah Ha!

Did I say THANK YOU JENNIFER!

So let me know what you think!  Do you like this idea?  Would you do it any differently?  Any other great ideas for helping our kids with their homework pressures as we move closer and closer to the coveted summer break??

And as always…thanks for visiting Laura’s Choice!

Come back soon!  Come back often!  Come back, come back……come back!

Smooch!