Setting your Goals - Homeschool planning

Over the next few months I'm going to sharing with you my tips for planning your homeschool, giving you an idea of how I go about making plans for my family each year. So today is....

Step One: Creating your Goals

• What are your goals for homeschooling?  

Knowing what you stand for, and what you hope to achieve will help you know where you are going,  what tools will fit YOUR homeschool, and will help you stay on track when the winds of change come your way, which they inevitably will. For example, you might go to a homeschool group, join a online group or two, read some blogs and websites, all of which will be filled with great ideas. There are so many resources and ideas out there in the world that you could use, but not all of them will fit YOUR homeschool. So defining your goals, how you want to teach, how your children learn best,  what will fit into your schooling day, what your schooling day will look like, etc. are all decisions which will help you refine what will work for you, and what won't. A lovely idea isn't any good to you if it won't work in helping your family and will quickly become more of a burden to you than a help.

1.  Why are you choosing homeschooling or home education?

People make the choice or decision for many many reasons. What was your reason?

* It's no good if you choose to home ed because you want your family to spend time together, but then you construct your homeschool in such a way that you are always on the run from one activity to the next and the only time you spend together is in the car or around the table at night, exhausted.

2. What lifestyle do you want to create for your family?

If you want a structured lifestyle, then a structured curriculum might be the way to go for you, however If you wanted a more relaxed lifestyle so you could be a bit more free to be able to take advantage of the different things that are going on in your local area. <   >Or you might like to be a mix of both.

3. What skills do you value and wish for your children to learn?

Is it Cooking, Gardening, Building, Craft, Sewing, Caring for Livestock, Horse Riding, Etc.

4. What are your educational goals with your children?

For me, I aim to create independent learners and thinkers, and not just rote learners, so I am working towards teaching them how to learn something they don't currently know, and interactive thinking about what they are learning. I am also trying to build discerning learners, as not everything that is presented as truth actually is.

5. Do you have a particular passion or topic area that you want to share with your children?

For example, you might have a cultural background that you want your children to learn about, or special interests that you feel are important for your children to learn, like growing food to feed themselves?

6. What are you family goals for the year?

Do you have some particular things that you as a family are working towards for the year?
- it could be living with less.
- Giving more to charity.
- A family trip.
- Growing enough food to feed yourself.
- Start a business.

The list is endless.

7. What goals do you have for your children in each subject area?

• Reading - e.g. reading independently
• Writing - e.g. effective letter writing
• Math - e.g. learning multiplication
• History - e.g. Learning some local history
• Science - e.g. Doing experiments 

• Art - e.g working on learning painting skills
• Music - e.g. Music appreciation 
• Handicrafts - e.g. Wool Crafts

• Spiritual - e.g. learning bible verses
• Emotional - e.g. learning to express feelings well. 

• physical - e.g. good body health
• Social - e.g. learning to introduce yourself to others
• Financial -e.g handling pocket money
• Home skills - e.g. learning skills in cleaning. 
• Business skills - e.g. learning to type on the computer. 

You might have very different goals for each of your children, some might be same.

So what are your goals?

Did you find this useful? Leave a comment to let me know what you thought.  ~ Christina

Pocket money.

Last fortnight I posted our new point system at home to help with rewards and behavioural management. We are also using it as a way to help the children to learn to manage there money.  So each point equals 5 cents.

To help our children develop good money habits, we are starting with the idea of using 10% for Charity, 10% for savings, and then they can choose what to use the remainder for with in reason.

With the remainder I hope to encourage them to start setting up there businesses, but for now we are focusing on the saving and giving elements.

So this was our first week of them giving from their own money. They had $5.40 to give. I asked my facebook friends for some advice on charities that they could give the money too.

Here is the working list of charities and ideas that they can give too.

Of course the first meaningful one on our list is the
Hope for Accreta Foundation.  Others on the list are;
Samaritans Purse Operation Christmas Child.
Australian Red Cross
Baby Mum Australia
Tear Australia and "useful gifts"
Heartfelt
SIDS
Starlight
Ronald McDonald House
SIM - Serving in Mission 
Guardian Care
Cycstic Fibrosis
Gospel for Asia 
Chilout
Oxfam
Kiva.org
The Good Shepherd Agricultural Mission
Compassion Australia
Epilepsy Australia
Heart Kids
Cancer council

So that is a good start. They give there money this fortnight to buy a chicken via Tear Australia "Useful gifts", and look forward to researching and learning more about the other organisations and what things they do to help the communities they are working for. Maybe one day they will start their own, or run some fundraising events for charities that they find are close to their hearts.

Do you have your children give to charity? What works for you? And who do you give to?

Our new points system.

A dear friend shared with me their points system. So we have decided to create a version and give it a go.  We recently purchased a Stick on white board from Office works, which we have put up on our wall. It is helping to make this process better and more fun for all involved.  The children can see easily how well they are doing.

In consultation with the children we have come up with a few things that we thought where important for them to get points for, as well as some that they will loose points for.

Each point is values at 5cents, and will be tallied at the end of the pay fortnight determining there pocket money for the next pay day.

Some are character traits others are practical things that help make the home run better.

For example
1pt - having their area cleaned before 9am.
1pt - Reading to the little ones (doubt bonus for me, as they are spending nice time together as well as practising their reading skills)
1pt - Having a good attitude when asked to do something.
1pt - Making Bed in the morning.
1pt - putting away their cloths
1pt - Encouraging a sibling.

-minus points
-1pt - dropping food on the floor instead of chicken bucket.
-1pt - Bad attitude
-1pt - For being discouraging, meaning, fighting, bullying, etc.
-1pt - For not eating in the kitchen.

ETC. This isn't our full list, and we are adding to it as we go.

What things would be on your list ? please share in the comments.