The Johnson Crew!

Is your home school day dragging on are your kids taking forever to get their schoolwork done well today we're going to go over six tips to help your kids get their score done in a timely manner and how to help them stay focused during school I'm Sarah and I'm a homeschooling mom to four kids and if you've been following along welcome back if you're new here my channel is all about homeschooling and mom life and a little bit of travel so if that interests you please consider hitting the subscribe button below

So you don't miss any other videos if you're like me and you like to have an efficient school day one of the keys to having that happen is to have your kids stay on track and not get distracted which is pretty hard just in general but especially if you have multiple kids at home right this might be one of the most frustrating things in our school day is when they're just dragging their feet or if they're just bouncing off the walls and too silly to focus

So we've learned some things along the way that have really helped out in these situations so let's get to it tip number one when it comes to independent work like a worksheet or when they need to read on their own we found that one of the best ways to motivate your child to get their work done in a timely manner is to use a timer you could buy a cheap kitchen timer or you could just use your phone which is what I do and set a reasonable amount of time for them to get their work done

Now for the first time implementing this if you're not sure how much time to set you could start by using a stopwatch or stopwatch on your phone and time them and get them excited about this you know tell them we're going to time you doing this and we're going to write it down and then tomorrow we're going to see if you can beat your time and if you do you'll get a piece of candy or whatever you want to give them because usually they like to try

And beat their record now even if you don't do that part I would say for the first week of implementing this to pad the time with a little extra time so that hopefully when they beat that time it gives them a little confidence boost and gets them on board with this system now you can be gracious too if you see that they've stayed focused and have worked diligently the whole time but still aren't getting it done in time then just give them a few extra minutes

And let them finish up but if you saw that they were getting distracted and they weren't working diligently the whole time and they didn't finish in time then don't let them get away with it because we do want them to learn to respect the system and then after the first week you can set it to a more reasonable time as you see what they're capable of now you'll need to set a reward for if they get it done in time and a consequence if they don't

Now reward could be something as simple as a five minute break and a consequence could be something like 10 minutes off your screen time whatever you want to do or what we do and this goes into tip number two is we have a behavioral system we call it the star system and I'll link to that video above and in the video I explain it in more detail but basically what it is they start the day with five stars and each time they misbehave they lose a star

And if they lose all their stars they lose their ipads for the whole day but whatever stars they keep throughout the week at the end of the week they get to go to the star store and buy a prize so as a consequence with the timer we would just take away a star now of course we still need them to finish that assignment so even after giving a consequence we would just set the timer again for a few extra minutes whatever we think they need to finish the rest of the assignment tip number two having a behavior system for home school is extremely helpful in keeping your kids on task I highly recommend checking out our video on the star system

And I'll link to it below as well it can be hard to get our kids to stay focused during school and it can be disruptive to be doling out our normal parenting discipline for every infraction during school so having a separate way of handling your kids bad attitudes or not getting their work done on time and not wanting to listen is a necessity for us so if they're not wanting to sit back down after a break I can threaten that they're gonna lose a star

And they usually choose to go ahead and sit back down because nobody wants to lose their ipads tip number three now if it's a subject they really don't like one thing you can do to motivate your child to get their schoolwork done is to make a chart where every time they complete a lesson they get to check off each lesson they've completed and when they get to the end of that list they earn a big reward for instance my son hated learning to read so we made a sticker chart with 30 spots on it

And once he completed 30 lessons he got to go to this big play place that was a special outing for him he was so excited about earning that reward that any time he started to whine and not wanting to do his schoolwork I would remind him but when you finish this chart you get to go to the play place yay and it would really help him settle and do the lesson with a better attitude tip number four let them take breaks every so often a normal attention span is three to five minutes per year of your child's age

So if you're working with your kindergartener you should give them a little break every 15 to 25 minutes for my third grader I try to get him to stick it out to that full 40 minutes that his age should be able to handle so our school time doesn't last too long but honestly that ends up backfiring and it ends up being better to give him a break every 25 to 30 minutes because then he comes back re-energized and recharged and ready to work again and we usually just do like a five to eight minute break it's not too disruptive we've let him go ride his bike outside run around outside play with his siblings get those wiggles out or sometimes he's just asked to

Lay on the bed tip number five another way to get your kids to stay focused during home school is to let them suck on a tic tac or sugar free mint or let them chew some gum while they're doing their schoolwork it's like a fidget spinner that doesn't require their hands it also acts as an incentive my kids are extra motivated to get their work done if they get to have a mint while they're doing it I actually picked up this tip from another homeschool youtuber mama over at everydayblessings

So go check her out next tip number six and the last tip I have for you to help kids stay focused during homeschool is to use headphones and put some white noise on so either you could plug this into the computer and use youtube there's a video called celestial white noise on youtube that we love or you could plug it into your phone and use the white noise app but if you have multiple kids and your student is easily distracted then this can be very helpful that way it can drown out the noises around them

And they can stay focused instead of having their focus pulled away every time something happens in the room or another way to accomplish this and I picked this up from another homeschooling youtube mama over at our thrifty home school you could use noise canceling headphones if your student likes silence better than the white noise then that would be a great alternative those are all the tips I have for you today if you have another tip that works well for your child please leave that in the comments below I would love to get some more ideas

And please comment below which idea you're excited to try first with your child and one of the greatest compliments you can give me is by subscribing and by liking this video by hitting the thumbs up below thank you so much for joining me today happy schooling