Teaching Ideas for the Crazed Hannah Montana Fan

I am a firm believer in using what you have as a parent to reach and teach your children. Whenever our children need to learn something in particular or have an area that needs serious work, I try to come up with a plan. I want to work with them in a way that makes them feel the most comfortable and still teach them what I need them to learn.

Hannah Montana is all the rage right now. Who can go to the store without seeing her face on everything from calendars, to clothing, to boxed snacks? Most kids love her and want to be her. While most of us, are not thrilled with these facts, we can use them for our own benefit. Below are 3 ideas on how to use your child's Hannah Montana fever to your advantage..

Learning spelling words, colors, or anything memorized.

So your daughter has to learn 15 words every week for a spelling test and she hates to sit and be quizzed over and over? Your smaller child still has not mastered her colors or letters? Use Hannah Montana to help.

The ways are endless but a place to start would be a poster. To make your own, simply copy and then paste a Hannah Montana picture from the Internet into a print program and print it on photo paper. Cut the poster into a few "puzzle" pieces. You could award a piece of the puzzle for every item memorized. Each time they earn a piece, pull out a heavy piece of board and help them glue the piece into place. When all the pieces are earned (over a few days or hours), hand them an uncut "poster" to keep along with a little prize. You can collect a few Hannah Montana inspired prizes before you start any of these games or activities. Some ideas (almost all sold at the dollar stores) include:

diva glasses

rock star iron ons

echo microphones

hair doodles

fun colored wigs (dollar store cheap)

bubble gum

Hannah Montana stickers

fuzzy anything (earrings, purses, combs)

play cell phone

notebooks

Anything pertaining to rock or divas.

Other ideas for memorization are to make memory games with Hannah Montana pictures in sets (just like the retail memory games). When your child flips the 2 matching squares over, you can have a word, color or anything she is learning written on the bottom. She must recite that before collecting her matches. As you play the games, you can play as if you are her, reciting the words and spelling too. Each time she hears her spelling word, it will help her remember it. If you haven't experienced it already, you will be amazed at how fast and effectively your daughter learns while playing a game with you versus sitting and memorizing spelling words.

You can also print out several Hannah Montana pictures the size of the paper and make a giant game board out of them and play a "Twister" like game. Type or write the memory words on each picture. You can say "LEFT HAND AIRPLANE". She has to find that word (and the Hannah picture) to put her right hand on. Each time she identifies the word, she is becoming more familiar with it.

Behavioral Changes.

We all have to come up with a plan when our child's behavior becomes unacceptable. Again, you can use what she likes to help encourage her to change that behavior. If your daughter is leaving her room trashed all the time and you would like to encourage her to keep it clean, you can use this method to make the learning process a little more fun. Cleaning is just one example, any behavior changes ( being kinder to a sibling, not biting her nails etc.) can be worked on using these methods. You can do something as simple as wrapping a Hannah Montana gift with wrapping paper and rewarding your daughter every time her room is clean by ripping off a single square of paper. You might be surprised at how motivating and fun this is for a young Hannah Montana fan.

Another idea, is to get a jar and glue a Hannah Montana picture to it. Every time your daughter's room is clean, you put in a gum ball or candy. When it is filled, you can give her a small prize or the Hannah Montana jar to keep full of gum or candy. This method shows your daughter constantly that she is improving as she sees the Hannah Montana jar filling.

You could also buy a large Hannah Montana poster and lightly tape full sheets of white paper over the poster in sections and remove it as her room stays clean revealing her favorite diva in the end. Again, she will be excited to see results as her Hannah Montana poster is revealed just as you want to teach her to expect results with her room or other task as she works hard to get them.

Chores.

We usually do not mind paying our children an allowance for extra chores around the house but many times younger children (up to age 10 ) do not find money all that exciting. Since you have a Hannah Montana crazed fan, you can incorporate Hannah into her allowance. One way to make it more fun is to make a chore chart with Hannah's pictures on it. Something as simple as that could excite and motivate her. Other ideas are for you to use Hannah Montana stickers on the chart, or to give the Hannah Montana inspired prizes instead of money for chores completed.

My favorite idea for rewarding a child for chores is to give them bucks to spend at a sale set up by you. It might sound complicated but it is not at all. Most of us, as moms, buy stuff all year for our children as we see it at the store on sale. You can store this stuff in a tub or hide it in a closet. You can set up a chore chart using the Hannah Montana elements and begin to mark off progress. This time though, as she gets the chores completed, you will give her play money. You can find play money at any dollar store or make it yourself. For an extra thrill, design Hannah Montana bucks by adding Hannah's face to printed out play money. Tell your daughter that at the end of each month, you will have a private sale for her to spend her bucks.

Your "sale" can be as simple as setting the items all on a counter with dollar amounts written on them to setting up a room with a play cash register and store signage. One great part of the sale is that she will not be able to afford certain items that month so she will save her money for the next month to combine with future pay checks. The learning is endless.

You can leave the prices on the stuff from month to month and just add new items when you can. Keep in mind that if you lower prices or just give her the stuff she wants when she wants it, you might teach her a lesson that is hard to undo. How many of us would have loved to have learned to save more and spend less as a child? Or that the harder we work, the more we can earn? This invaluable information can be easy to give when we do it in a fun way.

Like always, I encourage any creative ways to parent simply because they work better and they are more memorable. The times that my parents thought outside the box and did things in a less traditional way are the things I remember the most. You can change these ideas to fit your needs based on your daughter or children. The sale idea works well with several children too.

Hannah Montana may be the center of your daughter's world now, but you can teach her important lessons that will stay with her long after Hannah has come and gone. Good luck!