Home Work - Tip of the Week... Home Work Basketball!!

My 10-year-old daughter recently started playing basketball on a local rec team.  She absolutely loves it, and spends quite a bit of time in the back yard practicing with our hoop and her green and purple ball.  She's made amazing progress in her skills over such a short time because of the dedication she gives the sport, and I've wondered... what could she accomplish if she channeled that energy into her schooling?






And that is how Homework Basketball was born.  So the idea is, for whatever subject your child is loath to work on, have them answer on a sheet of paper leaving extra space around the answers.  We chose math, because that is Kylie's current nemesis, and for every problem that she answers correctly she gets to rip off that section of paper, wad it into a ball and add it to her ball pile.

At the end of homework time we set up a garbage can at a reasonable distance for her age.  The she gets a chance to throw each paper wad ball into the trash for a basket.  We keep track of the points and she tries to better her score every day.  If you wanted you could also offer a prize of some kind for a achieving a certain level of points (I am not always above bribery:)  You could also compete against your child, shot for shot, with the kids who enjoy a little bit of friendly competition.  Some of my kids love this.

So there you have it - a fun way to get your kids excited about their homework.  This can be adapted to spelling, vocabulary and other types of homework as well, and hopefully you'll have a little bit of fun while you learn!!