[Al Skierkiewicz]

I am going to make an assumption that you just connected the IR LED to the battery and hoped that it would emit. A second assumption is that you connected the motor the receptor and the batteries in series. In this case the LED lighting the receptor would turn it "ON" causing the motor to turn. LEDs are strange little devices that cannot control themselves when connected to a power source. An LED requires 2 volts to turn on so a single battery will not light it. An LED also needs some current limiting to prevent damage so you need to make a calculation to set the current to about 25 ma or whatever the design current needs to be. As to the photoreceptor you can think of it as a transistor with no base lead if it only has two leads. It would work best if you tie the emitter to the negative lead of the battery, the collector to one lead of the motor and positive lead of the battery to the other motor lead. The emitter will act as a switch, turning on when illuminated by the LED.
Now things will get complicated. If you purchased an IR detector module it may need to have a modulated beam from the LED. The remote for your TV uses a modulated beam to prevent things like the sun and lamps from affecting the remote commands. We really need to know what you are using. Part numbers and source.