Goal Setting

I am horrible with setting goals, for myself and for the girls. But I am realizing more and more that I have to sit down and set goals for months and year concerning our homeschooling. Since I want to be relaxed in my approach and bendable (my overall educational goal for educating the girls is that they learn how to learn and WANT to learn) so that we can go off on tangents or can concentrate on whatever subject they select for the day. Yet at the same time I do have a certain structure that I want to follow in an over-arching way. The best way is for me to have goals set down so that I can measure understanding and how far along the path we are. It isn't about how many pages we cover in a month or even that MB can write a thesis on a certain time period.

Right now I want to offer the world like a buffet dinner to her. A taste of this and a taste of that, in hopes that in time she will find that chocolate creme pie that she cannot resist and must savor every morsel of. This has its drawback in that at the end of the year I don't want to realize that in offering her the choicest, tastiest bites on the buffet, but only really little itty-bitty bites she has not ingested the nutrients that she needs to grow on. Also, that with so many choices and platters to taste she is so confused that she cannot decide what to actually eat. I want to make sure that we are hitting our major food groups in proportion while also allowing time for my exploration.

Okay, enough of the food metaphor. Anyway, how do I do this? I am using STOW I for history. I am doing life sciences for science, but not really in the order of the WTM, but in what I feel is a better fit for us. Math I am kind of doing 2 concepts at once, while also allowing for self-interest exploration into other math concepts. Today MB chose to do some phonics work on her own, although I am not pushing that right now. Handwriting is copywork, just to improve her handwriting - especially writing using lowercase. Other subjects and topics flit in and out of our days depending on various things.

I feel as though we are drifting and not really grounded into any since of WHAT IS SUCCESS at the end of the day, week, month, etc. Yet, I do feel as though we are moving forward and MB is learning things, although not sometimes the things we spend time on. Is this unusual?

And when I sit down to try to formulate goals I am stymied because I don't want to make them impossible and out of reach, nor do I want them to be easy (that is one reason we are not in ps).

Way too late to be trying to find the answer to this tonight.

On a good note, and hoping I am not jinxing myself, we have had two really good days. School is going well in that we are having very few arguments. Dawdiling (sp?), yes, arguments and fussing - no. I can live with that. The Attitude ladder has continued to work. MB works very hard to make sure that she stays in the top 3, and it only generally takes one warning that she is pushing it to bring her back into focus.

The biggest problem has been getting to all the reading. MB can only handle being read to for so long, even if she is doing something else. The whole cuddle up and read idea was not created with my girls in mind. That seems to be the thing she most wants to procrastinate on, and it isn't even like I am making her read. But we will fall in line an I am sure I will eventually figure out the right mix for it.

As well as things are going with MB, they are definitely heading south with K. I can tell she is going through on of her 'developmental' periods. The last week or so I feel like I am talking to a wall. K is generally a self-contained child with hard-to-ruffle feathers. But lately I am either being totally ignored or am subject to all-out, fall on the floor tantrums at the slightest thing and I really don't know which one I detest more. Today is one of those days that I wish I could send her with mamaw for 2 weeks until it might be over.

EM is teething 4 teeth, so yeah, that is fun. And while I was cleaning up puppy mess K decided to be helpful and feed EM...some playdoh food she had made. Thankfully it was non-toxic and she only had a little, but it was enough to set her off into a puking fit and totally mess up her mood for the rest of the afternoon.

Okay, I told you I was bad at setting goals. My goal was to be in bed by midnight every night this week -- I have yet to meet that one.

Peace,

Amy