How to Get your Kids to Love Learning

With all of the technical toys and video games enticing children to spend hours online, it can be difficult to capture their attention and teach them important skills. But I’ve found several ways to get your children to love learning.

Read.
First, read to your child every chance you get. Read recipes out loud while you’re cooking, read the newspaper out loud and read street signs as you drive or walk past them. And kids are never too young to hear you read to them – On the day my son was born, my husband read BusinessWeek Magazine to him.

Get Involved.
And it helps if you find things you yourself enjoy and want to learn more about. There are usually adult education programs offered at local school and community centers. Find something you’re interested in – cooking, furniture repair, a foreign language - and sign up for the class. Also see if there are classes your kids would be interested in and sign them up too. Not only will you learn something, your kids will see how fun learning can be.

Provide Rewards.
Another tip is to reward good grades. We keep a “prize bag” in the closet filled with prizes picked up at garage sales or super discount sales in stores, and every “A” on a test earns my son a prize. It’s fun and inexpensive. And if you don’t want to use a prize bag, you could also let your child pick what he or she wants to eat for a meal or offer the treat of staying up an extra half-hour past bedtime.

If you pay attention to your children and think of creative ways to get them involved in reading, math, science, history, and other subjects and learning activities, you’ll help them develop valuable skills and habits they can use the rest of their lives to be successful. And best of all, you can spend some quality time with your children in the process.

If you have some business tips or self-publishing questions for me, please let me know below. I’d love to hear from you!