Wow! It’s been two months!!!
The only reason that I have for not blogging is simply that I didn’t have time. As much as I love blogging for me, it’s just not high on the priority list of things that I HAVE TO get done. So, it took the back seat during all the Christmas programs and school activities, crafts that had to be made, gifts that needed to be sewn and parties that needed to be attended to. I have so many things I want to blog about (coming in the next few posts), but for now, we’ll start off the year with goals.
For Family Home Evening tonight, we set our goals for 2012. If I’ve learned anything about goal setting, it’s that they are no good without a plan. So, as we set our goals, we also made our plan (download at the bottom). And new this year, I added a “check-in” date. That’s a date that we put on the calendar to see how we’re doing. If we’re doing great or we’ve mastered a goal, that would be a good time to set a new goal. If our action plan isn’t working out, adjustments can be made at that time. I think this new “check-in” date will be good for incentivizing us too. The kids had a great time as we put each person’s date on the calendar. They were different for different events.
Each person had a spiritual goal and two personal goals. I have a few more than that floating around in my head, but for the family, this was a good amount. For my spiritual goal, I will be following along with my Sunday School lessons and my Relief Society lessons on my own. I teach nursery (18 months to 3 years) during these lessons, so I do not get to attend. For my action plan, I will study one lesson book from Sunday to Tuesday and the other from Wednesday to Friday.
My personal goal #1 is to flatten that belly! For January, I’ll be doing CrossFit twice a week. February will be three times a week and in March I’ll jump to five days a week. March 31st is my check-in date. The hubby is a certified CrossFit guy, so I highly doubt I’ll miss my mark on this one. He’s kind of pushy encouraging when it comes to working out.
Personal goal #2 is to BE BETTER. This includes being more organized, talking kinder, yelling less, etc. I was inspired by this church message. A lot of being better for me requires more sleep and more organization. So, for 2012, it’s to bed by 12 (I know this is really late for some people, but it would be a dramatic improvement for me!) and shower by 10. It seems like when I shower earlier, I go to bed earlier. Then, I will operate with an organizational plan for the kids which includes some new responsibilities for them and less for me. I will also operate with a monthly plan, broken down to a weekly and daily “to do” list. I’ve done this before and it works beautifully. I just need to stick to it this time.
The kids came up with some great stuff. (The yellow just hides his sister’s name 
Some of it will really challenge them, but it’s totally do-able. My five year old wants to be obedient! I was so happy!!! His action plan consists of picking up his dirty laundry, taking his dishes to the sink without being told, and always FLUSHING THE TOILET!!! My daughter who will be baptized in April wants to read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover before her baptism. She has a chart that she will follow to keep her on track. My oldest boy wants to be the best basketball player he can be. He and my husband came up with his action plan. It makes little sense to me, but they seem to get it. I love how enthusiastic everyone was. Now we just need to stick to the plan.
So, there it is. I blogged about it, so now it’s “in writing.”
You can download a goal setting forms below.
goal setting form as pdf 2012
goal setting form as excel spread sheet 2012
Tags: kids, life, parenting
Back in December, my son was making an ipu in his class. An ipu has a variety of uses in old Hawai’i, but for my son’s class, it will be used as a hawaiian instrument. After they cleaned their gourds on the beach with sand, they cut them open and cleaned them out.
Then, they made cording to use as a strap (pretend not to notice the nails that need to be cut and cleaned).
While my son’s class was working on this, I was moving from in and out of the classroom depending on the “station” that I needed to be at. My two youngest were moving with me. Without any instruction, my daughter sat down, grabbed a piece of my son’s cording and attempted to make her own.
This was a powerful reminder for me about how we teach our children. It really doesn’t matter what we say. At the end of the day, how they really learn is by watching what we do.
