I think that one of the things that's hardest for me to work out as we homeschool is: how much work will fit in a day? I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure this out over Christmas break as I worked up our new schedules. It's an important question: Hero is getting to the point where I need to start helping him to develop the skills to organize himself; he needs to start being a touch more independent about his school work.
But before I can hand him a schedule, I have to make one.
Showing posts with label organizing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organizing. Show all posts
06 January 2019
11 December 2018
Come Follow Me: Conversion
After they passed out the new books in our meetings this week, my husband and I discussed what we want to do with the extra hour of time on Sunday afternoons, and how we want to deal with the new Come Follow Me manual. We tend to do best with a laid-back approach, and decided that we want to spend some time painting miniatures and talking about the gospel each Sunday. Looking through the lessons, we're going to have to do the readings during the week, probably during school time: we have a very good evening scripture routine that we've decided not to displace. I don't know that we'll always get through all the readings with all the kids: the first week is no problem; it's only 1 chapter. But near the end of the year they've scheduled 11 chapters of Revelation... twice. Revelation is not really easy going, and it may be all three of the kids' first time though it, so we'll see what we can actually do. At least by the time we get there, we'll have some practice at this new format!
I'm really excited that we'll all be doing the New Testament this year; some of the most fundamental things are in the New Testament: the whole of Christ's mortal ministry, and then there are some really beautiful doctrines in the Epistles. I love that we'll all be studying the same thing, that all the classes will be aligned.
And then there's the purpose.
The aim of all gospel learning and teaching is to deepen our conversion and help us become more like Jesus Christ. For this reason, when we study the gospel, we're not just looking for new information; we want to become a "new creature". This means relying on Christ to change our hearts, our views, our actions, and our very natures.
-Come Follow Me, introduction
That's beautiful! And it's challenging. It may require a bit of a paradigm change: I usually go looking for new insights, new connections, new information, and just trust the process to create deeper conversion, both for myself, and also for my kids: I trust that if we take in the scripture faithfully, then the process of change, of transformation, of conversion, will happen.
Conversion is an interesting word, really. My husband is an electrical engineer, but he started his education in chemical engineering, and he recently commented that, scientifically, to convert a thing is to totally, fundamentally change it. Remember those science equations?
Hydrogen and oxygen are completely, wholly different from water. The equation is balanced: none of the atoms got away. But if you convert hydrogen and oxygen into water, then the water is in every way different from the original ingredients. In every way.
2H2 + O2 → 2H2O
Conversion is like that.
The invitation to follow Christ is an invitation to become someone new, someone better: to be wholly changed, wholly converted by His grace into a completely new thing. Thinking about it that way, remembering the bunson burners and charred remains in my high school chemistry class, I'm thinking that it's no wonder that conversion is sometimes an uncomfortable process. Conversion requires that we allow Christ to change our hearts, our views, our actions, our very natures.
Conversion takes time.
It's not a thing that happens all at once; it's a process. Several years ago, Brother Bednar shared the Parable of the Pickle. He talked about how, when you put a cucumber through the pickling process, it becomes something entirely different; the linguist in me notes that it's so different that we have two completely unrelated words for them, and the parent in me is still chuckling over the shocked looks I got from each of them in turn when I told my kids that pickles are made from cucumbers.
Having done some canning, and played around with some fermentation, I love the comparison of conversion to pickling. One interesting thing is that the act of filling your containers with cucumbers and brine is a relatively small part of the process. You could compare going to church and getting the materials and instructions and so forth with putting the pickles in the brine. But if you stop there, just put the cukes in the brine, then take them right back out, which might be compared to going to church on Sunday but not doing anything with it between times, well, then you're going to have wet, salty cucumbers. They won't have sufficient time to be changed. The new streamlined schedule will give us extra time at home to make sure that we're in the scriptures, doing family history, planning service, and organizing things so that we are carefully walking the Christian walk, not just talking the Christian talk.
[The] kind of gospel learning that strengthens our faith and leads to the miraculous change of conversion doesn't happen all at once. It extends beyond a classroom into an individual's heart and home. It requires consistent, daily efforts to understand and live the gospel. True conversion requires the influence of the Holy Ghost.
-Come Follow Me, introduction (emphasis added)
When you are fermenting, you have to have weights or something that holds the vegetables in the brine: they must be fully submersed. Some types of pickles can take months to make. Even quick tangy fermented carrots or sauerkraut takes several days. But ferments must stay fully submerged the whole time they are changing; otherwise, it gets quite nasty. Chemical conversions also take time, sometimes quite a bit. The extra time in the new schedule, I suspect, is designed for us to organize ourselves and prepare every needful thing, so that we have just that much more space to invite the Savior to fully change us in every way.
What an exciting thought to take into the New Year!
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05 May 2017
Bullet Journal Update
It's been about six months since I started using a Bullet Journal, and I am still really loving it. I made it past the honeymoon phase, and into just everyday life, and it's incredibly helpful. In a conversation on the AO Facebook group I promised to share some pictures, and got some ideas for a tweak that I've known I needed to do, but struggled to know how to do it. So here's what I've got.
The book itself is nothing fancy: it's a regular composition book, decorated with scrapbook paper and washi tape, and covered in contact paper. I may get something with nicer paper next time... I may not. Putting the contact paper on it makes this book tough. I took this picture six months ago, when it was new, but it still looks almost as nice, even after six months of kicking around my house, being drug around in my purse and my backpack... it's remarkably tough. I've got another one that I did to be a scripture journal, and that one is actually about 3 years old, and still looks brand new. Composition books with contact paper on them are pretty sturdy, and for this book, that's really important. It's really pretty easy to cover them, and I think that the fact that it's pretty - and that I chose the papers, so I like them - makes it easier to keep track of. Using it makes me happy, therefore I lose it less.
So, on the inside:
The book itself is nothing fancy: it's a regular composition book, decorated with scrapbook paper and washi tape, and covered in contact paper. I may get something with nicer paper next time... I may not. Putting the contact paper on it makes this book tough. I took this picture six months ago, when it was new, but it still looks almost as nice, even after six months of kicking around my house, being drug around in my purse and my backpack... it's remarkably tough. I've got another one that I did to be a scripture journal, and that one is actually about 3 years old, and still looks brand new. Composition books with contact paper on them are pretty sturdy, and for this book, that's really important. It's really pretty easy to cover them, and I think that the fact that it's pretty - and that I chose the papers, so I like them - makes it easier to keep track of. Using it makes me happy, therefore I lose it less.
So, on the inside:
First, I have a basic month-at-a-glance planner page. Because I am studying Japanese, I do the days of the week in kanji, and after doing this for six months, I no longer have to think about what the word for Tuesday is, ever: I know them all, thoroughly. That, alone, is pretty awesome, and something that a bought planner could never do for me. It's the writing them out, over and over and over, then living in them that did it. On the lower right is a tracker that I use to try to take care of myself: to bed on time, drinking water, and stuff like that.
This monthly page is a pretty straight-forward planner type. I put in appointments and sometimes blog events - you can see the 5 Days of Books series that I did recently made it onto my calendar, since I was linking it up to a blog hop with the Homeschool Review Crew. All the usual calendar things: family visits, lessons, whatever has a time.
I also keep a 6 months at a glance page, for those things that you know are coming up well in advance. It's not something that I use a whole lot, but it is nice to have.
Henry B. Eyring gave that talk about looking for God's hand in his life, and what a blessing it has been for him and his family, so I like to have a page going for writing that stuff down. The biggest problem with this page is that I keep filling it up (God is good), and then I forget to make a new page for a while.
It was goals that got the whole thing going for me: I had a goal sheet on the fridge for a couple of years, but I gradually outgrew it, and needed something more. Probably 3/4 of what I'm tracking here is related to my own education somehow.
In addition to the yearly goals, I've got goals and study projects that are tracked on a daily basis. This is great because then I can see what is doing well, and (more importantly) what is being neglected, and needs to come to the top of the heap.
Japanese and Welsh are large enough projects that they get their own charts, so that I can track the various things that I do to move those forward. A goal like "Learn to speak and read Japanese like a native speaker" is a enormous project, and I don't have an end date on that one, just things that I do regularly to push closer to that level of fluency. I don't care so much about when I "finish" (is it possible to finish something like that?), but I do care about doing certain measurable things that create progress. Those are the things I track: good goals are always measurable. I am far more fluent in Japanese than Welsh, so I can access more resources, and so that list is longer.
I also keep a list of the books that I've read this year. This makes me happy; it's the one arty page that I allowed myself in the book, and I love it. I love writing on it. Which helps me to make time for reading, which is not such an easy thing when you seldom get large chunks of time! But it's so important for teachers to feed themselves, too. You can't draw from an empty well.
I've been using these daily lists, and they're good, but I get frustrated, because sometimes -frequently- I don't get it all done in a day, and I don't like spending time re-writing it onto another day. But some things are great: if I get behind on the laundry, I'm actually more likely to work on it again if I put it on my list. Same with the dishes. The banjo is pretty hit and miss. I'm trying out a new weekly spread, starting on Monday, and I'm pretty excited about it, so maybe I'll share that one another time; I don't know if it fits me well or not yet.
My menu planner page is a HUGE time saver. It used to take me hours of digging around Pinterest and moaning on Facebook to get a menu made. I hated doing it. I did it today in under 30 minutes, menu, list and all. It was fantastic. And I couldn't have done it without this page in my book:
Because I'm a member of the Homeschool Review Crew this year, one of the things I've agreed to is posting on my blog at least once a week. I track that in my book, too. And, to help me think up things to say, should that ever be a problem, I have a page where I track ideas for posts as well. Actually, there's a couple other pages that deal with Crew stuff, but I think these are enough to give the general idea.
Six months into using the Bullet Journal, I'd have to say it's a solid success. More of my projects are getting attention more of the time. People sometimes ask me how I get everything done... this is it. It's all in my notebook, and I'd probably cry if I lost it. I think that the new weekly spreads are going to help me get a better handle on some of the homeschool work that we do on a loop schedule, so that the books that we are slowly reading will be done more consistently, and it should also help me do better with keeping my appointments actually in mind... I'm so very bad at that, even with a notebook to keep me on track. The nice thing is, when we bring our weaknesses to the Lord, He can make them strengths... even the one where we're perpetually a day late and a dollar short. And, for me, the Bullet Journal is definitely something that I think that He lead me to to help me with my ongoing struggle with disorganization.
07 January 2016
Self Education: How To Make Achievable Goals
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I worked professionally with this brilliant behavioral psychologist named Dr. Sara, and she taught me some things about setting goals that have really been a blessing to me, so I thought I'd share them with you. Here's the secret to a good, achievable goal:
"Come unto Christ" is lousy, as a goal or New Year's Resolution, because it's vague, and you can't tell if or how much you did it. Much better to format it into several specific goals, like this:
A really good goal is concrete and measurable, both in terms of amount accomplished, and time to accomplish it in.
"Come unto Christ" is lousy, as a goal or New Year's Resolution, because it's vague, and you can't tell if or how much you did it. Much better to format it into several specific goals, like this:
In 2016, I will come unto Christ by:1. Getting a job where I do not work on the Sabbath.2. By reading the Book of Mormon cover to cover.3. I will learn to worry less by studying peace in the New Testament, and then writing 5 blog posts/journal entries about it.
In that way, you have specific, concrete and measurable goals that are bounded by a deadline - "in 2016". I've seen things like the phrases "Come Unto Christ" or "worry less" suggested as goals, but these are inspiration for goals. It sets folks up for failure when they resolve to "worry less" as a goal. How do you even know if you're doing that in an afternoon, much less a year??
So, the next thing that Dr. Sara taught me about goals is that you need data. Preferably, including data from before you start, but I find that for New Year's Resolutions I can skip that step. It can be a really important step, though, and she showed me that using one of our residents as a case-in-point. I'll call him Bob. Bob was autistic and non-verbal. He didn't seem to understand much of what when on around him, and we had very little idea what was going on in his head; he just couldn't communicate much with us. Bob was a spitter. Dr. Sara had us track his spitting, and he was spitting on staff over 100 times in a day, often in staff's faces. It was gross. Bob was always in trouble. Some of the staff kept their perspective, but others really didn't like him; nobody likes to be spit on. So we counted his spit. Then we started a new behavioral plan for him. A week later, staff were complaining that it wasn't working, and wanted to change it, and Dr. Sara brought out the data. The spitting incidents had fallen from over 100 per day to around 50 a day -- at 50% reduction! That's huge progress, in a very short time, but because spitting is such an unacceptable behavior the perception was that there was no progress at all. If we hadn't had data, we might have abandoned a very successful intervention, thinking that it was an utter failure. Instead, we kept at it, and in a few more weeks he hardly ever spit. Bob's life and staff lives improved in meaningful ways. Data was at the heart of that success.
So good goals not only need to be written in a measurable way, they need to be measured as you're going on. For instance. I am working on learning Japanese and Welsh. Learning a language is a huge, overwhelming project. (Yes, I know. Two at once is crazy. What can I say? I can't choose between them.) But when you start looking for ways to make it measurable, then it gets better. I've tried a couple of different ways of measuring (I've been setting goals for Japanese for a number of years now), and my favorite is measure the podcast lessons. I use Japanese Pod 101 which has many short lessons, and a very reasonable subscription cost. One of my goals is to listen to 4 of them a week. It doesn't matter which ones - new ones, old ones, the same one four times: I just want to listen to four of them in a week. I know from experience that doing this moves my study forward at a pace I am happy with. If I do 4 in a week, in 52 weeks, that's 208 lessons listened. I know that I miss some, so I just round that down to 200 lessons in the year, which becomes my goal. Then, I write out the numbers 1-200 on my chart where I track things, and each time I listen, I cross it off. If I haven't finished by the end of the month, I'll just skip to February's numbers - see the little F where it changes color? - and start crossing out numbers there. I like how that feels when I look at the chart, late in the year, better than bunching them all up. But it doesn't really matter; the important thing is to set a goal and then track your progress.
So, the next thing that Dr. Sara taught me about goals is that you need data. Preferably, including data from before you start, but I find that for New Year's Resolutions I can skip that step. It can be a really important step, though, and she showed me that using one of our residents as a case-in-point. I'll call him Bob. Bob was autistic and non-verbal. He didn't seem to understand much of what when on around him, and we had very little idea what was going on in his head; he just couldn't communicate much with us. Bob was a spitter. Dr. Sara had us track his spitting, and he was spitting on staff over 100 times in a day, often in staff's faces. It was gross. Bob was always in trouble. Some of the staff kept their perspective, but others really didn't like him; nobody likes to be spit on. So we counted his spit. Then we started a new behavioral plan for him. A week later, staff were complaining that it wasn't working, and wanted to change it, and Dr. Sara brought out the data. The spitting incidents had fallen from over 100 per day to around 50 a day -- at 50% reduction! That's huge progress, in a very short time, but because spitting is such an unacceptable behavior the perception was that there was no progress at all. If we hadn't had data, we might have abandoned a very successful intervention, thinking that it was an utter failure. Instead, we kept at it, and in a few more weeks he hardly ever spit. Bob's life and staff lives improved in meaningful ways. Data was at the heart of that success.
So good goals not only need to be written in a measurable way, they need to be measured as you're going on. For instance. I am working on learning Japanese and Welsh. Learning a language is a huge, overwhelming project. (Yes, I know. Two at once is crazy. What can I say? I can't choose between them.) But when you start looking for ways to make it measurable, then it gets better. I've tried a couple of different ways of measuring (I've been setting goals for Japanese for a number of years now), and my favorite is measure the podcast lessons. I use Japanese Pod 101 which has many short lessons, and a very reasonable subscription cost. One of my goals is to listen to 4 of them a week. It doesn't matter which ones - new ones, old ones, the same one four times: I just want to listen to four of them in a week. I know from experience that doing this moves my study forward at a pace I am happy with. If I do 4 in a week, in 52 weeks, that's 208 lessons listened. I know that I miss some, so I just round that down to 200 lessons in the year, which becomes my goal. Then, I write out the numbers 1-200 on my chart where I track things, and each time I listen, I cross it off. If I haven't finished by the end of the month, I'll just skip to February's numbers - see the little F where it changes color? - and start crossing out numbers there. I like how that feels when I look at the chart, late in the year, better than bunching them all up. But it doesn't really matter; the important thing is to set a goal and then track your progress.
I have several goals relating to Japanese. One is to attempt to read the Teaching of the Prophets lesson before it's taught in Relief Society. Doing the whole lesson is too hard; I usually only read two or three sentences. But when I have a go it stretches my ability to read those words, and even with only doing a couple of sentences in any one sitting, over time I can tell that it's getting more possible: I do 2-3 sentences now, rather than struggling to make it through one. Steady progress is what I'm after; Baby Steps. The flashcard goal is a new one this year, and I'm pretty excited about it. I have a cool flashcard app called Sticky Study that lets me make flashcards for not only words, but whole sentences. When I can understand and pronounce whatever is in the question, then I pass it. As I'm (attempting) reading stuff, I take the sentences that are hard, or the ones that I want to remember, and I put them in my flashcards. Then I learn the whole sentence, the way that a native speaker said it. It's awesome. So much good is coming from this. (You can read about this method here and here and here.) But to keep it going, I need more sentences to make more flashcards. That's measurable! So I want to make 1000 flashcards this year. Every 100, I get to mark a little thing off. Awesome. And those sorts of things make language learning very measurable. And (I can say this from experience), if you do those little measurable things, then there will be progress. You don't have to do Some Big Thing. Little stuff, consistently, will do the trick. Pick stuff that interests you, and try to do it in your foreign language. If you can't do a whole article about watercolors, then do the first sentence. Or the first three words. But come back tomorrow and do the next bit. Pretty soon, you'll have some meaningful progress. Baby Steps are amazing.
Other areas can be done like this, too. Last year, I set a goal to do blog posts on the first 40 Psalms. I made it through 8 - obviously not a success. Except that when I looked at it, I realized that I'd done 20 blog posts about the Psalms -- not a failure, either! That's the other cool thing about measurable goals. I actually seldom hit the full goal that I set for myself. I tend to set big ones. I'd rather be ambitious: I'll certainly make progress, and if I should manage to make the full goal, then I'll make big progress. I like that. And I can live with the empty spaces that I know will happen on my chart-- there'll be enough there to show me that I did, in fact, make some meaningful progress towards fluency, towards watercolor competency, towards all the different areas that I track. Because I keep data, I will be able to see, in a real and measurable way, how I am better than I was a year ago. And you can keep a lot of data on a single sheet of paper! Check this out - it'll keep me busy all year:
So, make some goals! Cross off some numbers! Find a method that works for you -- and if you blog about it, or post it on Instagram or whatever, drop by and leave a link. I'd love to come cheer for you!
01 October 2012
Bookshelf Update
So far, to look at my books, you'd see a bigger mess than before. But I'm actually making some small progress. And, one nice thing about taking pictures of my shelves, it made me see that there is more empty space on there to work with than I thought. I probably don't need to buy more shelves as soon as I was thinking, even with a bunch of new school books on the way.
When I was reading this post, she talked about Guided Reading levels. I'd never heard of those before, and it turns out that they are NOT phonetic, but they do seem to do a pretty good job of separating the books out so that we can find some that are do-able. Schoolastic has a book wizard that you can look titles up, and there's lots of titles that are not levels for this Guided Reading, but I'm finding that some of our books are leveled, and so I'm pulling those out and putting them in a special place with stickers on the back of them so that he can easily tell what level they are at. I'm also hitting up my friends for empty cereal boxes so that I can create containers to put the various levels in. Kinda like the ones from that post I like so much. We usually get bagged cereal, so I have no boxes laying around, and even if we switch for a bit, it's going to take some time to get very many boxes. But if I hit my friends up for boxes I can probably get a few in pretty short order so that I can get started. Mom uses boxes, cut like magazine holders and covered with contact paper, in her classroom, and says that they hold up pretty well, so that's what I'm starting with.
The other exciting thing I've discovered since my first post about my books is an app for my iPhone that will help me to categorize my books and keep a list of what I do and don't have. I can tag them with multiple tags and then I'll have a list of what I already have when I'm book shopping. I've tried out the "lite" version and it's simple, easy, and quick to use. I can't wait to get the full version!
And, a little down the road when I've got my easy readers settled, I'll probably swipe Celestia's idea for organizing the school books. That's just what I need.
As much as I'd like to think otherwise, this is going to be a pretty long-term project. That much is becoming clear already. But, I'm starting to have a plan, and that's an important step!
When I was reading this post, she talked about Guided Reading levels. I'd never heard of those before, and it turns out that they are NOT phonetic, but they do seem to do a pretty good job of separating the books out so that we can find some that are do-able. Schoolastic has a book wizard that you can look titles up, and there's lots of titles that are not levels for this Guided Reading, but I'm finding that some of our books are leveled, and so I'm pulling those out and putting them in a special place with stickers on the back of them so that he can easily tell what level they are at. I'm also hitting up my friends for empty cereal boxes so that I can create containers to put the various levels in. Kinda like the ones from that post I like so much. We usually get bagged cereal, so I have no boxes laying around, and even if we switch for a bit, it's going to take some time to get very many boxes. But if I hit my friends up for boxes I can probably get a few in pretty short order so that I can get started. Mom uses boxes, cut like magazine holders and covered with contact paper, in her classroom, and says that they hold up pretty well, so that's what I'm starting with.
The other exciting thing I've discovered since my first post about my books is an app for my iPhone that will help me to categorize my books and keep a list of what I do and don't have. I can tag them with multiple tags and then I'll have a list of what I already have when I'm book shopping. I've tried out the "lite" version and it's simple, easy, and quick to use. I can't wait to get the full version!
And, a little down the road when I've got my easy readers settled, I'll probably swipe Celestia's idea for organizing the school books. That's just what I need.
As much as I'd like to think otherwise, this is going to be a pretty long-term project. That much is becoming clear already. But, I'm starting to have a plan, and that's an important step!
28 September 2012
My Library is Out of Control
My home library is crazy. Some of it's on shelves, some of it's in boxes. We have books upstairs and downstairs. There are schoolbooks that get into the picture books and picture books in the school books, and in general, there is very little rhyme or reason for how any of it goes onto the shelves. There used to be, but we've outgrown the old "system." Not that it was much of a system. This needs to change. To show how much it needs to change, I'll let you peek at my shelves, as they are, without doing a thing to them.
There are actually more books downstairs in the basement, in boxes. But for now, I just want to organize the stuff that's out. One nice thing about taking pictures is that I'm realizing that on my 9(!) bookshelves there is actually a fair amount of space. I've been feeling like there wasn't. There is also a lot of non-book items on my shelves. And if I'd master my clutter it would look better.
I've been reading about how to go about doing this. And the Daddy's got some ideas that have merit. And I've been reading some blog posts. This one has some great ideas. In particular, one I liked was to take all the very easy readers and put them in a bin of some sort so that they are easy for my emerging reader to find when he feels like reading something. I liked that idea enough to go get me a bin this evening. So, the organizing has begun. Wish me luck! (And leave me your tips in the comments; organizing is NOT my forte.)
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| Top: living room; Middle: kitchen; Bottom: music room-turning-school room. |
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| Shelves in our computer room. |
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| Top: my room; Bottom: boys' room; Both upstairs. |
There are actually more books downstairs in the basement, in boxes. But for now, I just want to organize the stuff that's out. One nice thing about taking pictures is that I'm realizing that on my 9(!) bookshelves there is actually a fair amount of space. I've been feeling like there wasn't. There is also a lot of non-book items on my shelves. And if I'd master my clutter it would look better.
I've been reading about how to go about doing this. And the Daddy's got some ideas that have merit. And I've been reading some blog posts. This one has some great ideas. In particular, one I liked was to take all the very easy readers and put them in a bin of some sort so that they are easy for my emerging reader to find when he feels like reading something. I liked that idea enough to go get me a bin this evening. So, the organizing has begun. Wish me luck! (And leave me your tips in the comments; organizing is NOT my forte.)
09 April 2011
Links and More Links
Barb has a great list of bird stuff. I downloaded bird notebooking pages and the feeder birds coloring book. Monkey loves birds, and I think this will be a great addition to the work we're doing with birds right now. Seeing as he's so interested, I'm seriously considering making our 6 weeks of birds into more birds than that. I'll have to ask him and see what he says.
Kate linked to this great article. She loved this line: "Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work." I love this other one: "Devoting yourself to something means shutting out other things." I find shutting out the other things to be painful: all those might-have-beens. So then I try to do everything, and I wear myself to a nub, drive my husband crazy, and... don't do any of them well. I've been thinking lately that I'm going to have to let some of my hobbies go in order to do a good job with this whole homeschooling thing. That's hard. But it's priorities. Desires guide priorities, and priorities guide choice, and that becomes my life. To create a priority (I'm going to homeschool my boys and do the very best job I can possibly do at it) means to shut out other things (I will never be a concert pianist, though I once dreamed that dream). And that's OK. Right, even.
The Dread Pirate Grasshopper Has His First Epiphany: The Equuschick on Justice and Mercy. I love reading her stuff, and this one is particularly good.
An unusual angle on the whole socialization thing.
Kate linked to this great article. She loved this line: "Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work." I love this other one: "Devoting yourself to something means shutting out other things." I find shutting out the other things to be painful: all those might-have-beens. So then I try to do everything, and I wear myself to a nub, drive my husband crazy, and... don't do any of them well. I've been thinking lately that I'm going to have to let some of my hobbies go in order to do a good job with this whole homeschooling thing. That's hard. But it's priorities. Desires guide priorities, and priorities guide choice, and that becomes my life. To create a priority (I'm going to homeschool my boys and do the very best job I can possibly do at it) means to shut out other things (I will never be a concert pianist, though I once dreamed that dream). And that's OK. Right, even.
The Dread Pirate Grasshopper Has His First Epiphany: The Equuschick on Justice and Mercy. I love reading her stuff, and this one is particularly good.
An unusual angle on the whole socialization thing.
02 September 2009
Clicking Around
I stopped by Keeley's blog the other day, and she had a lovely round-up of some interesting articles. I started reading them, and one click lead to another, and pretty soon I had IDEAS. Crazy stuff. I thought I'd see if it's catching. Let me know if it is, OK?
Keeley started with this cool post at the Homeschool Classroom about organizing the year into folders for the weeks, and then keeping the folders all in the same place. I don't think we're doing that much paper, yet, but it looks like a good idea.
Well, the Homeschool Classroom had some links too. I followed one to Donna Young's website. They've got some planner forms, and some lesson plans forms and how-tos. And she's got this amazing idea: set some goals. Oh yeah. That's pretty basic. Too bad I hadn't really thought about setting goals for the year, or those cool little sub-goals that are the steps that move you from where you are to where you want to be. For instance. Monkey counts to about 6 now, pretty accurately. It'd be nice if he could count to, say, 100, after a while. Maybe we should make that a goal and figure out how to get going on it, ya think? Yeah, I think it's a good idea too. Donna Young has some goal and objectives forms, but I didn't like her labels, so I made one in Word that's very similar to this one.
From there I meandered over to Many Little Blessings, where they have the most amazing piano restoration project they've recently done. Wish them good luck with the tuning part! (And if you ever do something like this, check with your tuner FIRST.)
Keeley also linked to this great post about hermit crabs and life.
Mother Hen has some crazy cool triangular math flash-cards.
I love reading homeschool blogs this time of the year, because there's so much energy and so many ideas. The Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival this time is called, "Inspired to Do Better" and I think that sums it up.
Keeley started with this cool post at the Homeschool Classroom about organizing the year into folders for the weeks, and then keeping the folders all in the same place. I don't think we're doing that much paper, yet, but it looks like a good idea.
Well, the Homeschool Classroom had some links too. I followed one to Donna Young's website. They've got some planner forms, and some lesson plans forms and how-tos. And she's got this amazing idea: set some goals. Oh yeah. That's pretty basic. Too bad I hadn't really thought about setting goals for the year, or those cool little sub-goals that are the steps that move you from where you are to where you want to be. For instance. Monkey counts to about 6 now, pretty accurately. It'd be nice if he could count to, say, 100, after a while. Maybe we should make that a goal and figure out how to get going on it, ya think? Yeah, I think it's a good idea too. Donna Young has some goal and objectives forms, but I didn't like her labels, so I made one in Word that's very similar to this one.
From there I meandered over to Many Little Blessings, where they have the most amazing piano restoration project they've recently done. Wish them good luck with the tuning part! (And if you ever do something like this, check with your tuner FIRST.)
Keeley also linked to this great post about hermit crabs and life.
Mother Hen has some crazy cool triangular math flash-cards.
I love reading homeschool blogs this time of the year, because there's so much energy and so many ideas. The Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival this time is called, "Inspired to Do Better" and I think that sums it up.
04 May 2008
Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
This week, the blessing that we have had so much of that there literally wasn't room is hand-me-down clothes. We got 2 big boxes of hand-me-downs, plus I hit the jackpot last fall on some clearance racks and got a bunch of summer clothes for about $2 each. When I sat down to sort it and put the new size into the drawers I had way too much clothes! I filled his drawers with cute stuff and then I had 3 big paper bags to pass along to a friend who's got a son that's a week older than Monkey. We are so blessed!
15 September 2007
Baby Steps to Orginization
Yep. It's definitely going to take a LOT of those little Baby Steps. But I feel the need to do it. Time Management, that's a big one, and it's Time to Overcome.
So, I bought a planner. And a book on organization called Organizing Plain & Simple.
And I'm going though it with my notebook in hand so I can answer the questions she raises & really think about what I'm reading. I also did a search for time management in the LDS.org library. There's some good stuff in there! Like This Day, from Brother Eyring at the April conference. Brother Monson addressed the same thing right after 9-11:
Brothe Scott says some very similar thing in talking about First Things First. I especially like this talk from Brother Maxwell on doing things in Wisdom and Order, and plan to come visit that one with my notebook in hand. (Did I mention that I love LDS.org's search feature? It makes it so easy to find the words of the Prophets, on whatever topic!)
I am Resolved. I am a little bit nervous. That's the perfectionist in me speaking. But the Lord can do anything - even make me efficient!
So, I bought a planner. And a book on organization called Organizing Plain & Simple.
And I'm going though it with my notebook in hand so I can answer the questions she raises & really think about what I'm reading. I also did a search for time management in the LDS.org library. There's some good stuff in there! Like This Day, from Brother Eyring at the April conference. Brother Monson addressed the same thing right after 9-11:And so I ask, “What are we doing with today?” If we live only for tomorrow, we’ll have a lot of empty yesterdays today. Have we been guilty of declaring, “I’ve been thinking about making some course corrections in my life. I plan to take the first step—tomorrow”? With such thinking, tomorrow is forever. Such tomorrows rarely come unless we do something about them today. As the familiar hymn teaches:
There are chances for work all around just now,
Opportunities right in our way.
Do not let them pass by, saying, “Sometime I’ll try,”
But go and do something today.
Brothe Scott says some very similar thing in talking about First Things First. I especially like this talk from Brother Maxwell on doing things in Wisdom and Order, and plan to come visit that one with my notebook in hand. (Did I mention that I love LDS.org's search feature? It makes it so easy to find the words of the Prophets, on whatever topic!)
I am Resolved. I am a little bit nervous. That's the perfectionist in me speaking. But the Lord can do anything - even make me efficient!
14 August 2007
Thinking in the Mind and Various Orginizational Thoughts
Found that there's a meme going around where people post different ideas on organizing your homeschool. I don't think that I've got a whole 7 things to contribute to it, but I am really enjoying looking at the things that the other have to say about it.
Headmistress, Zookeeper says a number of cool things. This one is my favorite - it's #7 on her list:
Dawn has a number of great ideas too - I think that #2 & #3 are my favorites from her list:
Karen did hers haiku-style. Most entertaining. She's mentions their family's tradition of going to Mass & then out to breakfast. Traditions around the first of the school year are so much more flexible in a homeschool; we have all sorts of choices when it's time to formalize ours a little more!
Willa did hers in terms of habits. Habit 5 made me think:
Headmistress, Zookeeper says a number of cool things. This one is my favorite - it's #7 on her list:
Do not try to do school at home. You're not a school. You're a family. ... You may not have pen and paper work to show for it, but the work of the mind happens in the mind, and it is what happens in the mind and heart that constitutes education.
Dawn has a number of great ideas too - I think that #2 & #3 are my favorites from her list:
Research the resources. I try to start this as early as I can because the more time I have, the better decisions I make. Once I determine what subjects we'll be studying I start looking around for the best possible resources. ...
Meet and mingle. Every summer I have at least one if not two or three coffee nights with my best homeschooling girlfriends.
Karen did hers haiku-style. Most entertaining. She's mentions their family's tradition of going to Mass & then out to breakfast. Traditions around the first of the school year are so much more flexible in a homeschool; we have all sorts of choices when it's time to formalize ours a little more!
Willa did hers in terms of habits. Habit 5 made me think:
5. Habit of fostering motivation and the responsible use of the will by balancing freedom and discipline.
12 January 2007
Managing My Time
So, I headed over to welltrainedmind.com to see what sort of interesting things they have on their website. The book mentions message boards, and I'd really like to talk to someone who's done this. I'm feeling intimidated by homeschooling in general and by the classical education in particular. But it's the best model I've come across to date, so it's what I'm leaning toward right now.
Anyway, in the process of wandering around their site, I discover that Susan Bauer has a blog, so I stop by & I find that she's made herself a color-coded schedule. Interesting. I really wish she'd gone into a bit more detail about how it works, but it's an intriguing idea. One of my big issues with homeschooling is that I'm worried that I won't be organized enough. That Monkey's education will suffer because I slack off. I'm just not so good at big long projects... 12 years of education is one MASSIVE project.
So I think I might have to give this schedule idea some thought. Trying to put myself on a schedule might be more than a little interesting, what with A's "schedule" being so variable and unpredictable. But it does seem that some sort of schedule would help me get more done. There's so much that I'd like to get accomplished that I don't.
Anyway, in the process of wandering around their site, I discover that Susan Bauer has a blog, so I stop by & I find that she's made herself a color-coded schedule. Interesting. I really wish she'd gone into a bit more detail about how it works, but it's an intriguing idea. One of my big issues with homeschooling is that I'm worried that I won't be organized enough. That Monkey's education will suffer because I slack off. I'm just not so good at big long projects... 12 years of education is one MASSIVE project.
So I think I might have to give this schedule idea some thought. Trying to put myself on a schedule might be more than a little interesting, what with A's "schedule" being so variable and unpredictable. But it does seem that some sort of schedule would help me get more done. There's so much that I'd like to get accomplished that I don't.
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