Advent Resolutions -- Domestic Church

Realizing that my natural tendency is to float off into abstract realms (stepping pleasantly over scattered Legos and discarded socks in the process) I decided to post a short list of my Advent resolutions, so that I can track accountability. This fits into my Learning Goals category -- December was for the Domestic Church. Providentially, because this is something I have not been focusing on enough recently.

As always, if something wonderfully more appropriate shows up in the course of the season, that is not mentioned in the list, I will try to look at it as an opportunity rather than a distraction. The list is for navigational purposes only.

• Clean one area of the house per week
• Kids declutter their rooms and environments -- start this week and continue throughout.
  
• One craft per week with the kids -- doesn't matter what so long as it's a craft! --and more possibilities available.
• Adding bits of beauty and space and cleanliness to the house (during Lent I started by working on the cupboards and corners and "hidden places" and this worked well -- inside to outside, details to big picture)
  
• daily private devotions
• family devotions-- daily prayers and activities connected with the season
• Giving/Receiving gifts
• Service project -- still off in the realms of "would be nice" -- nothing specific yet.
• Some type of prayer project -- I am thinking geographical or to do with life issues.
  
• Reading related to Advent and Christmas
• Learning the reasons and backgrounds for various traditions

And oh, yes, review the past year and plan for the future. That will be the fun part for this particular person who loves to introspect, but finds setting up an Advent decoration to be somewhat penitential.

To make the practical activities listed above into occasions for interiority, I'm going to allow myself to journal about how they go and what I discover (bad and good) in the process. Not on here, necessarily -- I doubt if I will have time, for one thing. But even journalling inside my head or in scattered notes is often helpful.

June is for Living Geography

I just realized it is now June, which means time to decide on my next Learning Goal. Since we are going to be doing some travelling in June, both local and far-flung, it makes sense to devote this month to Living Geography. (See the Ireland resource list)

Looking ahead a bit, July can be devoted to Recitation(Memory). Several years ago I spenta summer having the older kids work on memorizing prayers and Scriptures. It was one of those things that worked really well. We designed incentives to motivate them. A couple of them went on towards a longterm, self-motivated pattern of memorizing. I would like to try it again now that the younger kids are getting older.

And August will be a good time to focus on Habits -- Moral and Intellectual. HABITS is a huge area. In August, I will devote the time to ponder the philosophical side of habit-forming, and consider some of the habits listed by Charlotte Mason and some Catholic thinkers. Then, SINCE "Habits" is such a big area, I'll probably try to focus on one specific habit per month during the rest of the year. Now that I've already been doing these Learning Goals for six months, I doubt that adding a new element will derail me.

I updated the learning goals list to include links to the monthly focuses (foci?) so far. Hope that is helpful to anyone who has been following along.

Also, because the 2007 Learning Goals have been working so well for me -- "pegging" my ideas into a temporal sequence -- temporal sequence is a weak area for me! I started a similar Heart of Home Goal list on my other blog. Since the focus there is on considering different areas of my house, it is more practical and so it hopefully shouldn't distract from the learning goal list. Hopefully. Stay tuned.

my learning goals for 2007

I love new years. I think it's a very Biblical and Catholic concept to think in terms of seasons with their ebbs and flows, increases and decreases. I read in a book about Edith Stein that she said every day ought to be a new beginning and it's made a difference to me to think about it that way. As the Psalm says: "Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew a right spirit within me." That language is all about beginnings and new things.
So here's one idea I have about how to order and prepare for next year. I hesitate to post this because I certainly haven't tested it for two months and I know a lot of those untried ideas fizzle out, but I've been pondering about how to approach things next year in a way that suits my learning style. So maybe writing it out here will help me keep some accountability -- at least, I hope so : )

Anyway, the idea I had was somewhat inspired by this thread about planning for the liturgical year. Some of the moms mentioned that they used a file box with folders by month and added ideas in there ahead of time -- book lists, recipes, crafts and devotions. That way they could simply pull out the file, say a month ahead of time, and start preparing.

My challenge is always in preparing --I have an easy time thinking up ideas and doing the research but my difficult is in execution. This seemed like a simple way to get things set up so that I wasn't scrambling at the last moment, feeling a step behind.

Something like this seems to be working for me now with the Liturgical Year. And a system for doing things bit by bit seems to be the best thing I've found for keeping up with the housework.

SO it occurred to me to apply the concept to something else I've wanted to do for a while -- take different homeschooling ideas one at a time and look at them in depth. Mostly Charlotte Mason ideas, but possibly some others from Montessori or other sources.

Most of these are ideas I've already "done" in some form or another, but I think it would be fun to focus on them in a bit more depth. So my plan is to take the list here and assign a month to each one -- to learn about it, research and experiment. I already have January's theme but the rest are still up in the air.

I'm not sure how to do the "habits" yet -- whether to choose one per month or to have one or two months devoted to the concept of "intellectual and moral habits".

• Notebooking--January
• Handicrafts --September
  
• Narrations -- February
  
• Nature Study -- MAY
  
• Composer Study
• Art Study
• Living Geography and Travel -- June
  
• Century Books -- March
  
• Scripture Reading
• Plutarch and Shakespeare -- October
  
• Foreign Languages
• Copywork/Dictation/Composition -- November
  
• Poetry/Poet Study -- April
  
• Recitation (Memory)
• Habits

Perfection
Attention
Obedience
Observation



New Additions:

• Medical/Therapy --- July
  
• Sports/Games/ Physical Training -- August
  
• Domestic Church -- December
  

There's more than a year's worth there-- so I'll continue into next year or combine some into one month. I'll probably think of some others that are higher priority, and if some major life event occurs, that will take first place. But this is the tentative layout!