Goals

Last week was not a great one when it comes to schooling.  Too many things got sandwiched in our schedule and threw our momentum off.  Lucy didn't nap well.  Lili didn't want to do school with us, and didn't seem to like the fact that Izzy needed my attention for some learning time.  The house was quite unkept.  Dinners haphazard.  I scratched my cornea and spent a good day and a half teary eyed, in pain, and half blind.  But, despite 'failures' there were a lot of successes.  We had fun, we spent time together, I modeled baby care taking, I baked with my children (this is hard for me to do! I like to control my kitchen!), we spent time outside, and Izzy finally learned to ride a bike (she has had a very real, yet irrational fear of bikes all her life and lacked coordination- so we thought- to pedal.  All the sudden she just hopped on and now its hard to get her off!)

I'm hoping to have some of the same successes as we live life together as a family this week, but perhaps with a little more intentionality in a few areas.  I'm also making a few curriculum adjustments.  So, I'm writing down a few goals.  I'm told it makes it more real that way!

1)  Read more.  Silent reading time, me reading aloud, whatever it takes.  We need to have more reading time.

2)  Less phonics.  I know there are different camps out there of phonics vs sight reading.  We have tried some in depth phonics work and its not going well and I'm not finding it helpful to the overall experience.  So, we are skipping those portions and most assessments in our CLE reading.

3) More comprehension building activities.  Izzy reads well, above grade level.  However, she often sees the trees and not the forest when it comes to comprehension.  We are going to do frequent small 2-4 paragraph reads with a few quick comprehension questions to build this skill.

4) Intentional time with Lili and Lucy while Izzy works independently.  They need it.  Izzy needs to learn to be more independent in her learning.  It will do wonders for everyone.

5)  Have Izzy plan some 'spirit week' fun days for the coming month to keep it fun and exciting around here (one thing she misses about public school)

6)  Intentional evening time.  I don't want to stop being mom and teacher after dinner just because I'm tired.  I want to be intentional of how we can be spending that time together instead of always shuffling them to play areas by themselves while I crash on the couch.


Here's to a wonderful, blessed, God-honoring, intentional week!