Saturday, December 31, 2011

Our Website Is Launched and A New Year Begins

Today is the last day of 2011. The challenges I have faced this year trying to motivate my children to learn have resulted in this blog and now our website K8Motivate.com.

As the new year begins my resolutions include sharing this blog and website with as many parents, grandparents and friends as I can. And I hope that all will help to build a community of people with the common goal of raising the next generation of intelligent, creative and responsible adults. It is our job and our privilege to take on this task.

What will you do this year to contribute to the future of our children? This Blog is a good place to start and I will be looking for your problems, suggestions and comments.

Happy New Year!

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Now Use It in a Sentence

It seems fitting since I am a co-founder of K8 Motivate that I contribute the first motivational suggestion to our blog!  I hope this story can help in some small way and galvanize others to share their ideas.

My son is in second grade.  Every week for homework he has to write ten sentences using words from his spelling list.  At the beginning of the school year he dreaded the task, and because of his negative attitude the 10 minute project always took at least an hour.  One afternoon I was in the kitchen starting dinner while he complained about sentence number one.  He said he couldn't think of anything to write using the word "six".  So I said, "I have six fingers on each hand." So simple and silly but funny to a seven year old. When he and his sister started giggling I knew right away I had found a way to help him focus. So he wrote his own sentence and had all ten done in record time.

Now he looks forward to his spelling homework because he knows he has the freedom to write anything he wants as long as he uses the given word in the sentence.  He is now thinking creatively and having fun doing it.

Finding the key to unlock my child's gifts is such a challenge.  Sometimes my ideas work but many times they don't.  Please share your strategies no matter how insignificant you think they may be.  Each child is different and your idea may be the one that solves a problem for a child struggling in school.  I look forward to reading them all and our followers will too.

Never Too Young to Learn

The fact that this book is out there is interesting. That it is for real, and sold out in some places is proof that parents want to give children every academic advantage possible and help them excel in the modern world.

According to the write up, it's a storybook adventure of two friends who discover the wonders of calculus. It's also a bedtime storybook for the under 2 set. Where was this when I was a kid? My math whiz father trying to pound theorems into my teenage brain was not a pretty sight.

We are not endorsing this book, just putting it out there for you to see.  But its very existence proves that for some parents it is never too early. Our web site and blog will hopefully show it's never too late.

Education has taken a dip in this country but like the economy, will rebound. Our question is, what are you doing as parents and educators to motivate your children? Send us your thoughts and let us share them with others that need ideas.

Friday, December 2, 2011

We Are Now Visible to the World

Until a few moments ago, our blog has only been visible to ourselves. Today we have opened it up to the world. We will be making the big announcement to our friends and family and are now soliciting your ideas for this blog. We are looking for unique and proven ways to motivate K-8 students to excel academically. Seems like a simple request but for many parents, a hopeless impossibility. Our goal is to help change that. For those who follow and participate in our blog, we hope to make significant changes in the way their children approach education.

Who wants to be first to share their thoughts with the world?  Send us an email and we will post your contributions to our blog.

Our web page is nearly complete to the best of our ability and we hope to publish later in the month, so stay tuned.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Our Web Page is Nearly Complete!

We are not hosted just yet but we have managed to finally settle on a look for our website and to start adding content. We are about 50% done and hope to open all our sites in December. From there on we will constantly be building onto our site.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

And So it Begins

Today we have set the ball in motion and locked down our website name. Nothing is visible right now and the ideas are still gelling but very soon we will launch our site. We will need a lot of participation to make our ideas a reality. We are looking forward to hearing from you.