Part 3 (of 6) of the Brain Stages Social and Emotional Learning Series for Parents describes a simple way to motivate your kids by giving them clarity and a purpose for learning.
[If you’d like to check out the first 2 SEL posts in the series, you can click on the links below.
Part 1: How to Help Kids Identify Emotions and Work Through Them
Part 2: Build Children’s Confidence and Empathy for a Better Life.]
Think about how you feel when you know what you’re going to do and why, and how you’re going to get there. Having that kind of clarity makes us feel confident and focused.
Knowing the What, Why, and How gives us a clear direction. We feel like what we’re doing matters.
For kids, knowing the What, Why, and How for the things they’ll be learning offers direction, purpose, and a sense that what they’re doing is important.
This kind of clarity also makes them feel secure, so they have less anxiety.
In fact, giving your child the What, Why, and How for what they’ll be learning can even get them excited about what they’re about to discover.
For a toddler or preschooler, knowing what’s coming in a consistent routine, and being informed ahead of time of a change in plans, can make the difference between a tantrum or a smooth transition, right?
When school-age kids know WHAT they’ll be learning in each subject in school, and WHY knowing that information is good to know, and HOW those skills will benefit them, they have a purpose for learning. They can take ownership of their own learning. Which is amazing!
Learning with purpose is something your kids do for themselves.
Kids go from resistant to excited about learning.
So how do you fill in your kids on what they’ll be learning this year to give their learning a purpose?
Follow the simple steps below, and enjoy the best school-year yet with your family!
5 Steps to Give Your Kids’ Learning a Purpose
1. Look up what kids are supposed to learn in each subject.
In the United States, write Common Core for education into a search engine. Then click on your child’s grade and each subject area. A list of information and skills will show you what they are supposed to learn this year.
[If you don’t live in the United States, most countries have similar websites. Just type the name of your country and your child’s level in school. You will likely find a list of skills your child should learn this year.]
OR, if you have a child(ren) age 4 through 11, you can pick up a Brain Stages book where I’ve included easy-to-read lists for each grade.
In the US, that’s kindergarten through fifth grade, but the lists can be easily adapted to wherever you live.
(FYI, Soon Brain Stages will be released in China!)
There are also several websites that list skills kids are supposed to learn in each grade, although I’ve found that most are less comprehensive than the Common Core site.
2. Make a list of things your child(ren) will learn this year.
Go through what your kids will be learning with them.
3. Brainstorm how they will use those concepts in their lives.
This is the key step in giving your child(ren) a purpose for learning the material they are supposed to grasp this year. They need to know why the things they will be learning will be valuable to them.
Helpful hint: Relate the concepts your child will learn to things they’re interested in. Do they love cars? Cooking? Legos? Dance? Art? Dinosaurs? Soccer? Basketball? Science? Video games? . . .
Whatever lights up your kids’ interests can reinforce their purpose for learning—how they will USE what they learn.
Oh, and I thought you might like to know this about math:
A dad once said to me: “My son was upset to be struggling with a formula to figure out the volume of a cylinder. He asked me why he had to learn this when he would probably never use it. What do you say when your kids ask questions like that?”
Here’s the answer: Math is amazing. There is math in everything we see in nature, in everything we build, in everything we do – art, music, architecture, medicine.
You name it, there’s math in it.
Every little concept we learn in math gets us a tiny bit closer to understanding our world. And for all we know, your child might invent something incredible someday and feel lucky that he learned to figure out things like how to find the volume of a cylinder.
Everything we learn in math is a little discovery about how the world works.
4. Pin the list(s) of concepts and skills your child(ren) will be learning in a central place.
Having the list in a place where everyone can see it helps family members support and encourage one another throughout the school year.
5. Ask your child(ren) to put a checkmark after each thing on the list as they learn them. This does two things:
A) They feel accomplished every time they get to add a check to the list.
B) You can say goodbye to learning gaps.
If there are concepts on the list without checkmarks, during the break between school years, you can do something fun to learn whatever they missed—cooking, gardening, playing games, doing art projects . . .
The point is, when kids know what they’re going to learn and how their discoveries and skills will help them in life, schoolwork becomes much more fun, interesting, and meaningful.
Not to mention, this kind of clarity makes our brains feel SAFE so we CAN learn. And when we give kids a purpose for learning, they get to take ownership. They’re more motivated to put in the effort!
As always, if you need help, schedule a Zoom meeting with me here, and I’ll walk you through doing this with your child(ren) in your personal circumstances. The first coaching call is always free. 😊
May you have an amazing school year with your family!!
Trish Wilkinson, Brain Stages Parenting and Education
