Setting Goals for Your Homeschool Life
The beginning of a new year is a perfect time to evaluate your homeschool life and habits, celebrate the past year’s successes, and resolve to improve on your shortcomings. One of the most important parts of setting goals is to honestly evaluate your and your family’s needs and make a realistic and sincere attempt to meet them. It’s very easy to commit to a complete lifestyle overhaul and then burn out even before the end of January comes around. Use these tips for setting–and meeting!–goals for yourself and for your family, and explore these resources and activities for keeping yourself and your family on track.
Sometimes the momentum of the new year doesn’t have quite enough impetus to get us out of the holiday break mode. This blog post from Homeschooling Mom has some great tips for restarting homeschooling after the holidays. Whether your family takes a longer break over the holidays or over the summer, these are some great ways to build enthusiasm and maximize the effectiveness of your homeschool time after any extended break from schooling.
Setting Goals Realistically
Setting realistic goals and making a plan to follow through is essential to avoid both floundering and burnout. It allows you to allocate your time appropriately, offers a structure that can still be tailored to your family’s needs, and gives you the lifeline you need to get back on track when unexpected life events derail your plans. A lot of the information I find on setting goals offers advice on evaluating your family’s needs and creating your goals from there, but sometimes I need more than that. Seeing an actual, specific goal list is often the jumping-off point I need to dive into my own.
This post from Happy Homeschool Nest not only offers advice on determining your family’s and children’s needs and setting goals, but offers some concrete examples of concepts, tasks, and skills you may want your child to master, divided into appropriate age groups. While I wouldn’t ever use these types of resources as my only guide, and the individual goals can and should be evaluated and adjusted for your family, it can be helpful to see what has worked for others and draw inspiration from others’ ideas. Accountability is a great tool to use as you work towards your goals. These fun and practical family resolutions provide ready-made accountability partners–each other! And while some of these resolutions are things you’ll probably need to work on throughout the year–and beyond!–others are tasks you’ve likely been wanting to check off your list for years! Being able to mark a task as “completed” is a great way to stay motivated to continue working on your other resolutions.
Setting Goals Together
Accountability is a great tool to use as you work towards your goals. These fun and practical family resolutions provide ready-made accountability partners–each other! And while some of these resolutions are things you’ll probably need to work on throughout the year–and beyond!–others are tasks you’ve likely been wanting to check off your list for years! Being able to mark a task as “completed” is a great way to stay motivated to continue working on your other resolutions.
Setting Goals Simply
Disorganization is the enemy of meeting goals. It’s hard to keep track of progress and stay motivated when you can’t keep track of your day. The Unoriginal Mom provides essential tips for creating an organizational system that works for your family without overwhelming it. Some of the most common personal and family goals focus on physical and mental health, financial responsibility, and expanding a knowledge base. If you plan to incorporate any of these types of goals into your homeschool life, check out this “Homeschool Resolutions” series of Homeschool Living for some great resources and ideas to include in your plans for healthy living, meeting financial goals, and cultivating a love of learning in your homeschool.
Setting Goals Lifestyle
Some of the most common personal and family goals focus on physical and mental health, financial responsibility, and expanding a knowledge base. If you plan to incorporate any of these types of goals into your homeschool life, check out this “Homeschool Resolutions” series of Homeschool Living for some great resources and ideas to include in your plans for healthy living, meeting financial goals, and cultivating a love of learning in your homeschool.
