The First School Years

Hello everyone!

I am researching how parent help to motivate their children for a paper I am writing. If you could answer these questions for me, I would be very thankful.

Louella

Parents:
How many children do you have? What ages are they?
What do you do to help motivate your children? To do chores, to complete homework (or other learning activities), to be independent
Do you use rewards on a regular basis to convince your children to do things? What are the rewards (candy, tv time, parent time, …)?

My youngest son just started first grade. Because kindergarten in our school district is still only half-day, this is his first experience with being gone for a full day. He's a bright boy and really loves school. He comes home each day, very excited, telling me everything he's done at school. But he's having trouble in the morning. He doesn't throw tantrums, never refuses to go, and never says he doesn't like school. His only complaint is "I miss you, mom". This makes it heartbreaking at drop-off time.

My oldest son, Aidan, is 8 and in third grade. He's always been pretty advanced in his reading ability. He was reading books before kindergarten; at the very beginning of first grade he was reading at a third grade level. By the end of second grade he was at an advanced fourth grade level. It's just something that's always come naturally and easily to him.

I know many of you have babies and haven't dealt with this yet. But for those of you with children in school or who are teachers, what's your experience with school policies about food?

For the past few years, our elementary school has encouraged healthy eating for the kids, asking that we send healthy snacks in their lunchboxes. Okay, for the most part I do that. But I will send in a few chips to go with a sandwich or a cookie or two for dessert. I don't think it's the end of the world.

I just need to give some much-deserved praise to all the teachers out there!

I spent yesterday on a field trip with my son's third grade class (all three classrooms!). Because we live in Massachusetts, this is a wonderful time of year to take the kids to see the Mayflower and Plymouth Plantation. But it's still almost an hour on the bus and then a day-long outing.

When I picked my son up from preschool today, he had wet his pants slightly. His teacher didn't know (I don't think). This is highly unusual for him so I was pretty surprised when he told me he'd peed in his pants. I got him home and out of the wet clothes and sent him to the bathroom. He peed FOREVER. So I asked him if he'd gone potty at school and he said, "no". When I asked him why he said that the teacher told him she can't buckle his pants for him, so he can't go potty.

I thought I'd start a thread on homeschooling/tutoring resources. I was going to share a fabulous Grammar program that my principle shared with me when I started teaching. It is called Easy Grammar Plus, and to be honest, it helped me understand grammar so much better. I grew up in the public schools and I never understood diagramming sentences because I didn't know how to identify anything other than subjects, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Prepositional phrases were confusing me and I quickly realized that that's where my own students were stuck as well.

I thought I'd make the subject broad since so many parents probably have questions regarding which type of schooling is best for their children. For me, I would LOVE to homeschool, but I do worry that Aiden isn't a good personality for homeschool. I find that he listens so much better to other people than he does to me. He also learns better by watching other kids do things and following suit. It just seems like a group setting is best for him. He does really well in preschool. I've been amazed at how much he has learned the past few months.