It's not about giving them credit for it, it's about learning and behavior. You can make just about anything seem like a fun activity if you do it properly. This has been proven in the past and it's part of Operant Conditioning.
For example, have you ever wondered why some people love math and other people hate it? It's all about how they learned to look at it as children. I didn't much care either way with math as a child, I just thought it was something we did in class. Then I happened to get a 100% on a test and this was reinforced by my parents to the point where math is my favorite subject (and yes I drool when I get a good calculus problem)