Goal setting

Two weeks ago, a dear friend of mine, Connie, and I were discussing our homeschools, and one of her suggestions was to sit down with each child and set goals for the year!

… WHAT A FABULOUS IDEA… and it fits in perfectly with the Montessori approach!

The next day, Aikman and I sat down to discuss what a goal was and what some of his goals were for this year.  Coming from a 5 year old, I really didn’t expect him to say much… maybe a field trip to a specific place, or possibly something he would like to study.

Well, I must admit, he didn’t disappoint… he did mention that he wanted to go to the zoo to see his favorite animals, the meercats, and he wanted to take another trip to the aquarium to see the penguins, another personal favorite.  He did mention that he wanted to study animals, which was a part of my plans for this year anyways (I detected this earlier this year, and was already planning on it.)

However, shockingly, he told me that he wanted to read 130 books by the end of the year, by himself!  Likewise, he wanted us to read 734 books together as read-alouds.  I was SO impressed… not only did he understand what a goal was, but he also understood what constituted a reachable goal for himself – no prompting needed!

                                          Aikman with his reading chart

We made a chart for him to keep up with his total books read all by himself, as well as a list to track the read-alouds that we’ve read this year.  This is great reinforcement in showing Aikman that he is working towards his goals, and I can encourage him to continue to work towards his goals.

However, what I really liked about Connie’s plan is that the parent is also supposed to share his/her goals with the child(ren).  Not only is the parent providing a reminder of the goals that the child personally wants to achieve, but also the child can also remind the parent of his/her goals.  For instance, my goal is to exercise 3 times a week (which is also made into a chart), and if I’m having a bad week, and not wanting to exercise, he can remind me that I need to be working towards my goal, just like I am reminding him to work towards his goals.

Have you asked your children what goals they have?  Do these goals align with what you are teaching this year?  I’m looking forward to hearing what others think about this!

Our curriculum–practical life skills

I’ve been working on a list of practical life skills that we will be working on this next year.  Here’s what I’ve got so far….

Personal care:
1.  Shower and wash hair
2.  Dress self – buttoning, snaps, zippers, and especially TIE SHOES!  (Hmmm, I believe an alternative to the dressing frames will be coming out soon!)
3.  Brush hair
4.  Make bed
5.  Fold and put up laundry, including hanging clothes
6.  Sort clothes to put into the hamper

Kitchen:
7.  Make breakfast and lunch on own
8.  Serve others juice and foods
9.  Set a table and table manners (see this post by Counting coconuts about teaching table manners)
10.  Read a recipe and measure out the ingredients
11.  Load and unload the dishwasher

Other life skills:
11. Make paper
12. Make salt dough ornaments and other organic ornaments (paper chains)
13.  Tend to plants in a garden – planting seeds, watering plants, pulling weeds
14. Woodworking – we’ll be using this curriculum as our base
16.  Clean the bathroom sink (this is the start of “chores” for Aikman, in which he will eventually learn how to clean everything in the bathroom.  Currently, part of his brushing teeth routine includes cleaning the sink and faucet after every use.)

Grace and courtesy:
15.  Greet others at the door
16.  Answering and talking on the phone
17.  “Help others” – we will be volunteering at our church’s local Food Pantry, and his job will include greeting others as well as retrieving and carrying the bags of food.
18. Complement others

Do you have any suggestions that we can add to this list for this next year??  What are some other skills/chores that your children complete at home that could fit into Montessori practical life skills?

The calendar notebook

In my last post, I mentioned that we are using a calendar notebook with our youtube calendar/circle time.  Today, I wanted to share with you exactly what is in our calendar notebook… and where we’ll be heading with it in the future.

Aikman has a white notebook that currently has 3 pages that he completes.  We will be adding additional pages as the year progresses, but I am adding them in slowly.

Here’s what’s in the notebook:
- tracing calendar page (after we add in tally marks, we will be using this blank page instead, or a separate tally marks page could be added)
- hundred number board
- weather graph

Each of these pages is matched up with a songs in the youtube “calendar time” playlist.  So, after he sings the “Months of the Year” song, he will pause it, and state what the month is (eventually, he will write the month – the write the date page mentioned below.)  Likewise, after the “Days of the Week” song, he pauses the playlist and states what today is, and then fills in the day on his calendar.  At this same time, he also writes in the next number on the hundred number board, and he counts up to this number.  The last page that is currently being used is the weather graph, which he completes after the weather song.

Other pages that will eventually be added in:
- make the date with money – I can’t decide if we will use real money or this printout
- temperature chart (page A-4) – I plan on having him determine the temperature outside, and then mark it on a chart.
- birthdays list – rather than a tally mark, we will record the name of friends’ and family members during the month of their birthday.
- lost tooth tally  -- We will be keeping a tally of friends (and Aikman!) as they loose teeth.
- write the date – I don’t have a form for this yet, but it will be a piece of paper with 5 sections… one for each weekday.  Initially, we will just write the day of the week, but will eventually will move up to writing the full date (I’m sure that will be a totally different form).

Calendar/Circle time

I really appreciate the idea of doing calendar and circle time within a normal classroom setting.  It’s a great way to settle the kids, help them to focus on routine, and to discuss any changes to the daily schedule or pressing issuing that need to be addressed in a group setting.

However, as a homeschooling mama to ONE child, it’s a little more difficult.  I’ve admired the cute public school boards, and even envied the calendar boards used by other homeschooling blogger mamas.  I “built” what I thought would be an amazing calendar board, and after a month, my son was DONE with it.  Here’s what it looked like the last time we attempted to use it… (oh, how pathetic it looks!)

This year, I STILL want to do calendar time, and even include for him an opportunity to sing traditional “circle time” songs that I’ve discovered he’s never heard.  BUT, I wanted it to be more independent of me “leading” the circle time, yet at the same time, to be interactive similar to a group setting.

Our solution:  youtube playlists combined with calendar notebooks! (How we used a calendar notebook with this playlist will be my next post!)

Today was day #7 for our current school year, and so far, he LOVES the calendar time!  He sings the songs everywhere he goes, and it has drastically helped him to gain several sets of “new information” in an appealing way… AND, in attempting to stay true to the Montessori method, he even has the (semi)freedom to choose which songs he wants to hear!

WHAT I DID:

I created a free account on youtube, which for most people means that they are wanting to add youtube videos to cyberspace, but it also allows you to set up playlists.  I set up a “mandatory” playlist called “calendar time”, which he will use this playlist with his calendar notebook, to replace the wall calendar time that I created last year.

Here’s what is on our “calendar time” playlist: (all hyperlinked to their respective youtube videos)
Pledge of Allegiance
Months in a Year
Days of the Week
4 Seasons
What’s the weather?
Skipcount by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s  (a favorite!)
Vowel bat (another favorite!)
Time relationships
Money/coin recognition

Likewise, he and I have set up 3 additional playlists that he can choose from, to be played after the calendar time playlist.  These are “circle time” songs that he sings.  Each of these playlists contain 5 songs that he and I have pretty much agreed upon.  He has the freedom to choose which of these 3 sets of playlists that he would like to sing along with.

Examples of songs that we’ve included: 
- classic early childhood songs (ABCs, “Twinkle, twinkle”, “Wheels on the Bus”)
- nursery rhyme songs (“There was an old lady who swallowed a fly”)
- Bible verses, books of the bible, etc set to music
- yoga moves
- jokes (Aikman wanted to add some humor into the playlist, to which I obliged… his current favorite is this sugarpot version of “I’m a little teacup”.)

When we initially set up the playlists, we sat and watched several sets of educational youtube videos.  He then chose which songs to put into each list, AND he even rearranged the order the songs within the playlist, so that it is exactly the way he wanted it. 

Here are our favorite youtube channels that have GREAT sets of songs to choose for your playlists: (scroll through the list on the right hand side of the page to see the videos)

HarryKindergarten -- BY FAR our favorite channel to select from!

SuperSimpleSongs  -- made by a teacher for ESL children; Aikman LOVES any of them that has that goofy guy with the puppets – the same guy who is in the Days of the Week video mentioned above!

Cullen'sABCs  -- she’s a preschool teacher, whom Aikman has adored for nearly 2 years!

Seeds Family Worship – Bible verses set to music

 

Does anyone else use a creative way of doing calendar or circle time with their kids?