{all photos taken by John Robert}

On a particularly gloomy day last week,  I had a rare moment of genius when JR told me he didn’t feel like doing school work. I’d love to share my secret with you.

Step 1:  Get busy doing something yourself.

Step 2:  Ask your child to work on something (his choice) and report back when he’s finished for you to check his work.

Step 3:  When your child comes back to tell you he’s finished, act like you really want to see what he’s done, but you can’t leave what you’re doing.  Ask him to take a photo of his work with your phone and show it to you.  (This only works if you trust your child with your phone or camera.)

Step 4:  Ooooo and Ahhh over the photo he took.  May be give him some pointers on how to take a better photo.  For example, “Step back a little so you can get a picture of the entire red rods.  I can’t really see how you put them in order.”

Step 5:  Ask if he wants to do another work and take a picture of it when he’s done.  (At this point, JR was dying to do more work so he could take a photo of it.)

Obviously this won’t work everyday since the newness and excitement would wear off, but pull this out of storage on those tough days and it makes working fun.

What’s your secret for getting your child excited about school work?