Get Moving to Get Motivated: Tips for Parents a.k.a. Quarantined "Home Teachers"

A video was circulating in my family’s group chat this weekend showing an exasperated dad ranting about how exhausted he was from doing school activities with his kids at home. His point, to the delight of teachers I’m sure was: GIVE THE TEACHERS A RAISE! Of course we are in whole-hearted agreement here at The Indy Lab, but for now let’s focus on helping you guys at home, “school” your kids.

Homework, or classwork all too often calls on kids to move through a series of questions, prompts, or targets while sitting at a desk or table. This is pretty commonplace and hard to avoid, but it isn’t always the most engaging. It can be hard to motivate your child through assignment completion.

This is where obstacle courses can come in.

As a speech-language pathologist who often has to get young children to move through repetitive articulation exercises, I have found that integrating them into a large obstacle course does the trick.

Here is what you do:

  1. Take a look at your child’s assignment. How many points of completion are there? Ten reading comprehension questions maybe? Five spelling words to rewrite five times? Twenty-five multiplication problems (yikes)? Whatever it is, divide them up individually or in groups. These will be points on your obstacle course.

  2. Help your child design a multi-step obstacle course in your house that involves body movement. These body movement points will be mixed in with “mental gymnastic” points from your child’s homework items.

    Some body movement obstacle course suggestions are:

    1. Hopping over sofa cushions

    2. Weaving in and out of lined up dining chairs

    3. Crawling under the dining table to get to the other side

    4. Five jumping jacks/a somersault/sit ups/pull ups

    5. Completing a simple art activity drawing a heart, star, or coloring something on a piece of paper

    6. Doing a dance move

    7. Signing a song

  3. Now that you have some movement pillars, it’s time to integrate school work items.

    Your obstacle course could look like this:

    1. Hop over three sofa cushions

    2. Complete three multiplication problems

    3. Do five jumping jacks

    4. Crawl under the dining table

    5. Answer a reading comprehension question

    6. Dance to the song _____ for 30 seconds

    7. Complete three more multiplication problems

    8. Do a somersault

    9. Draw a flower

    10. Run back to the start

  4. Run through the obstacle course as many times as it takes to complete the homework assignment, but feel free to change up the order to keep things fresh. 

  5. Adapt your obstacle course elements to your child’s age and developmental level. 

  6. For kids who tire easily, try completing a portion of their homework in the traditional way and bring in some mini obstacle courses as they get bored to finish up the rest.

Best of luck new parent teachers! You’re not alone in feeling the challenge of this. We will be here to help with more ideas.

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