Need Writing Motivation

One problem I've come across in homeschooling (and in traditional schooling) is how to motivate kids to want to learn and to practice what they've learned. I can tell my son that it is important to learn to do something, but he's 9. Sometimes he just doesn't see the importance of sentence structure and that the way words or punctuation are placed in a sentence can affect the meaning of a sentence. And, I can not resort to the wonderful parent argument, "Because I told you so." I am committed to raising a "thinker." I'm always stressing to him I don't want him to ever think something has to be true or the only way just because it's on t.v., or in the newspaper, or because an adult (or other authority figure) said so. To my mother's consternation, I explain to him why I need him to do things.

From my above example, you can probably tell that one of our biggest struggles is with writing. Writing is important. Learning to write properly is important. But, all the examples I've come up with to illustrate the importance of learning correct grammar just aren't really important to a 9 year old.

I have found that I can motivate him with "writing contests." (I've also had luck with letter writing, but I'll share about that in a later post.) He will write poetry, stories, essays--if it is for a contest. So far he has submitted things to a magazine that he subscribes to and to a PBS contest. But, I just discovered (through a homeschool e-newsletter) this website that provides a list of writing contests for students with links to the contest's webpage. I told my son about one of next month's contests and he actually seemed excited about writing a submission! Woah! He didn't even ask, "What can you win?"

There is also a related site that provides links for math contests. I'll provide the links to the contest list pages below. Have fun and good luck!

http://homeschoolwriters.com/chart.aspx
http://homeschoolmathcontests.com/default.aspx