In a continuing effort to find ways to motivate our child’s academic/educational progress, this month’s Motivational Monday is on Problem-Solving.  

While doing a worksheet full of “word problems” can be boring and unmotivating, solving genuine problems can be very motivating!

Consider some of these problems and all that your kids would learn in helping to genuinely solve them:

• We have no more space on our bookshelves…

• We have $X saved for a family vacation…

• What's for dinner?

• The back gate was blown down…

• The tomato plants died…

• We are in the midst of a super drought…

These problems, large and “small” all require an incredible number of skills to effectively solve.  Some skills that will be involved in solving these:

• Brainstorming 

• Measuring

• Calculating

• Budgeting

• Analyzing

• Evaluating

• Researching

• Donating

• Building

And there will be so many more skills, specific to each problem and to each child’s attempted solutions to that problem.  Notice that none of the given problems are ones that have a single solution.  The possibilities are endless, as are the possibilities of what your child will learn in helping to solve these problems!

Takeaway: Life is full of everyday problems that require a variety of skills to solve- involve the kids!