Of bribes and incentives
House on Red Corner · 2008-04-15
TheBubster is throughly addicted to television and I have attempted to leverage that against her in numerous ways. Turning it off is punishment for wetting pants, turning it on is reward for completing assigned tasks. I know it may not be the most effective manner-pedagogically speaking but we have learned all the letters of the alphabet and numbers up to 20. Now that NaNa has given her a dryerase tablet for learning letters, shapes and arithmetic, we are leveraging telly against her in a new manner. No telly until she traces the dotted line path for the entire alphabet. I have been doing this for just a couple days and already she has the confidence to start and finish A a by herself and she attempts B b but erases it immediately.
This exercise also helps me to practice my patience because it has taken an hour to an hour and a half each time to even get her to sit down with me and quit whinging for the telly to be on, and even then I have to write the entire set myself before she’ll even touch the pen. Once she gets through the first two letters, she falters and refuses to go on by herself, so we do it together. That’s the completion of our exercise and she gets her telly. As time progresses, there will be more requirements to do the list more than once, and it will also be necessary to write her name as well, and that is what we are ultimately heading for innit!?
Tags: alphabet, education, learning, telly