“Beta, have you finished your homework?”
“Yes, ma.”
– said no kid ever!
Figuring out how to make your kids do their homework – at home and on time – is perhaps one of the most difficult tasks of parenting. Sometimes it makes you wonder whether sending them to school is worth it after all.
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Come to think of it, it’s taxing on the kids too, especially the younger ones. They’ve put in hours at school. They don’t know the “importance” of studies – they can’t distinguish between learning and education in the first place. They have better things to do than pick up their school books and answer questions that they couldn’t care less about.
Parents and teachers both need to take care that children don’t lose interest in reading by equating it with studying. And so, here are some nifty tactics you can use to make homework a fun and interesting activity that piques and satisfies their curiosity.
1. Gamify It
Gamification is a term that is used in corporate management for improving employee performance through incentivized tasks. Companies use it to gather more data and understand their customers better (which is why social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn encourage you to “complete your profile”). You feel an urge to finish an activity when you see a progress bar that shows how far you’ve come or peers who are ahead of you.
Kids can’t withstand this mental bias either. Use it in a positive way. The easiest approach is to get a funky timer or hourglass (sand has given way to strange liquids, slime, and bubbles these days) and get kids to complete one subject or topic before one of the set is done.
Of course, gamification is incomplete without incentives or rewards. Make sure their daily cookie or muffin is waiting at the other end of homework. Or, a small daily allowance. You could also add 15 minutes of TV or YouTube time for homework finished ahead of time!
2. Stoke Their Genius
“I was born intelligent but education ruined me.”
This is a quote attributed variously to Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, and others at various times. The point, however, is to recognize that homework won’t make your child a genius. Instilling in them a sense of curiosity and wonder will.
School education hasn’t kept up with the pace of innovation that has transformed other spheres of life in the last few years. Traditional preschool and primary education are enhanced by laptops and iPads in the classroom but are heavily dependent on outdated standards of scoring and rote learning.
Subtly introduce your kids to the STEM approach of learning, which involves teaching Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in a unified way instead of as separate subjects, with simple and practical experiments using everyday objects. Critical thinking, logical analysis, problem-solving, and do-it-yourself projects are the pillars of STEM education.
You can start by associating everyday things with their homework – such as measuring the number of glasses it takes to fill their water bottle or adding up the number of tomatoes and lemons in your fridge.
Make them see the bigger picture and introduce them to new concepts that they don’t teach at school, especially in topics like math and engineering. They need to know how angles and fractions will help them later in life (let them withdraw cash from the ATM or pay for groceries). Wherever possible, involve them in building or creating stuff that applies these concepts. Instead of buying expensive, remote-controlled toys, help them build a science lab at home, complete with simple electronic assembly kits or slime-like, non-toxic chemicals.
If you have a garden or a common play area in your society, and if the weather permits, there’s no place like outdoors to do homework. The fresh air rejuvenates kids who’ve been stuck indoors in the class or in front of a screen the whole day. Plus, being closer to nature not only helps kids develop an interest in subjects like Environmental Science but also increases their spatial abilities and productivity, as many studies have shown.
3. Be On Their Team
To borrow another concept from the business world, collaboration and teamwork invariably get better results. Being on your child’s team doesn’t mean you do their homework for them. Rather, show that you’re ready to help them “learn” the subject by mixing up the routine and giving them alternative approaches. For instance, you could let kids role play and be the teacher – there’s no harm in writing down things that they dictate to you, as long as they worked out the answers themselves.
Of course, you don’t have the time to help them out every day. However, just being around in the same room lets them feel they have your attention and support. If you bring your work home, you can finish a presentation or send out a few invoices while they complete their assignments.
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Ultimately, homework isn’t a matter of life or death – or erudition or illiteracy. Don’t take it too seriously. Emphasize and demonstrate to children that relationships, love, kindness, trust and respect are more important than scores. Remember that poor grades at school never stood in the way of the most successful entrepreneurs!
Parul Gupta
Janani S Koushik
KSP Team
