It's a Privilege

Jonah helped me pick a mountain of beans today.

Okay, so he picked a few handfuls, then chattered, asked questions, and made up knock-knock jokes while I picked beans.

He's learning.

We brought them in the house and piled them on the counter.  We ate lunch, then I said, "Hey!  If  you help me work on these beans, I'll let you do some math pages during Evan's nap!"

Hee!

This is a trick I learned from my brilliant sister-in-law/dear friend who is a mother of six.  Make a potentially unpleasant thing desirable by making it a privilege.

"If you do you chores, I'll let you do some schoolwork!"

It works, too!

Ah, motivation.

Well, there was still plenty of reminding, whining, coercion, wandering away from the task at hand, etc.  But still, there was a reward at the end of this tedious job in the form of schoolwork!

We got about half of them done (jarred up and turning into lacto-fermented pickles, yum!) before Evan ate dishwasher soap and I had to call poison control.   (He's fine, apparently completely unaffected, praise God!)  That was right at naptime, which I had to delay a little in order to monitor the child who will eat anything.  But naptime did come, and the four pages of math was so! much! fun!  It helps that we're starting a new book, and it involves fun manipulatives.

Let's see how long we can sustain that level of enthusiasm...






~~~
I haven't had a chance to write more about out trip to Pioneer Woman's Lodge and the pie workshop there.  But if you're interested, my Mom wrote about Evan's experience, and April Phillips wrote about the horses.  Check out the posts!  I'll try to write more later.