January Challenge -- end of month

So how did I do?

I think I totally owned the Two Desserts a Day challenge. That's sort of my super-power. ... dessert eating.

On the rest of it.... I see I phrased it carefully enough so that it would be hard to totally flop.

1. Exercise. ...incidentally during daily life and in occasional longer duration activities.
2. Healthy Eating. Go back to norm of few simple carbs and fruits or vegetables at most meals.
3. Hydration Goal. Drink more tea as replacement for coffee.
4. Do A Bit Extra Sometimes. ... get out there and engage with the world somehow in an active way (I need reminding to do this : )).
5. Personal Care Routine -- vitamins, teeth etc.

I actually did way better on this than I thought. Hooray!

My worst fall-through was #2.

I think I learned something. If I have a "positive" challenge it works better for me than a "restrictive" one. In other words, most of these were things I needed a simple reminder for. My problem was that I would just forget to do them, so having the challenge helped keep them closer to the top of my Think List.

On the other hand, when my inner self senses "you're going to try to take something away from me, aren't you?" the challenge doesn't work -- in fact, you could almost say it works inversely. I probably did worse on the food thing than I would have without the challenge.

So I'm thinking that maybe for these restrictive things I need a "Method" or a "Plan" not a challenge. Though I'm not an engineering type, this type of thing seems to be my preferred mode of approach. Since I happen to get gratification out of organization, I think that ends up being a psychological PLUS for me that makes up for the perceived deprivation -- or at least, gets me over that initial inertia to the point where eating less is a habit enjoyable for its own sake.

Just thinking!

Resolutions and Retrospectives for 2009

Photo by Brendan R

Almost time for those New Years' Resolutions again!

Here are last years':

• Resolutions and Retrospectives
• Some Learning Goals for 2008
• Reading for 2008

If I look at how I actually did compared to what my goals were:

• Make it the rest of the way to Rivendell. Then find another journey to go on.

(I did this)

• Stay in my target weight range.

(I did this)

• Eat properly and make decent food for my family.

(Hmm.... inconsistent)

• Continue our family story society (which means continue my story, which means getting past writer's block).

(We haven't kept this up)

• Keep the under-structure of our house organized (that means, though the floor might get messy, we have a cleaning and organization system that works so we can find things we want and avoid things we don't want, like super-bacteria.)

(Well, sort of.... see Household Journey and Household Checklists for the nitty-gritty)

• Same with time management.

(hmm, could still use some work)

• Cycle back through the 2007 Learning Goals, on a more practical level this time.

(I let this drop completely....sigh)

• Study 5 encyclicals, 4 GBWW, and the Bible in English with a regular habit of reference to the Greek and Latin (There! That's concrete!)

(I did read at least 5 encyclicals. I didn't get very far with the Great Books, and I didn't get all the way through the Bible like I had hoped).

• Spend time with my family -- reading, games, conversations, travels and traditions. Schedule this in and plan accountability checks.

(I didn't do the scheduling, but I have been slightly better about conversations with the older ones and playing time with the little ones -- still room for improvement)

• Look over my goals at regular times -- once a month -- and see how I'm doing on them.

(Nope, completely let this drop).

• I had hoped to keep a better reading list this year, but I didn't.

(Here, though, is what I did keep. )

I don't think I'll change my resolutions too much for this year. I'll continue the ones I kept and carry over the ones I didn't keep.

I usually try to think of a motto or theme for the year, which was from an idea of Leonie's.

This year, the one I keep thinking of is one I've mentioned before.....

"Purify the source."

It came from Flannery O'Connor by way of Maritain who was quoting Mauriac. According to that, Shelley wrote:

"whatever strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful"

and again this evokes St Paul:

For the rest, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame, if there be any virtue, if any praise of discipline, think on these things.

Today

(Clare took the picture)


Amy at Epiphany Springs made her own Only for Today Rule of Six based on Pope John XXIII's Daily Decalogue. I liked the idea and today, rinsing dishes, it occurred to me that I could use it right now.

Ever since we've come back from Oregon about a month ago, I've been getting one virus after another, and now that I'm starting to feel a bit better I think I could use a few small "dailies" to keep in mind as I maneuver through the day.

So here's mine, based on what seems to slip the most:

Only for Today:

• I will clean up as I go and be patient and thoughtful about it
• I will pay attention to a child before he or she needs to seek out attention.
• I will go outside, even if only to take a deep breath!
• I will try to keep a pleasant expression on my face.
• I will seek to communicate with someone I don't know very well.
  
• I will catch up on one thing that has been sliding off my to-do list.

Tickers and Trivia

I moved a couple of tickers over to my sidebar from my other blogs.

For the Walk to Rivendell challenge, a tip of the beanie to my daughter, who told me about it a few years back. I guess if I can make it to Rivendell, I can keep going to Minas Tirith or to Lonely Mountain, depending upon if I decide to be in Bilbo's company or in Frodo's.

I don't exactly WALK -- I ride on the exercise bike, which Clare tells me is within the rules. But I managed to start up a habit of riding again after a prolonged lapse during the holidays. I am trying to alternate 5 miles one day with 3 miles the next. Today is my easy day.

The other ticker is for our progress through the "academic year" of 180 days. Here in California we are required to keep attendance records, 180 days of a 4-5 hour day. So the ticker is a fun way to keep track of where we are and how far yet to go. There have been days when I would have let the homeschooling slide altogether if I hadn't remembered the ticker.

I have a weight maintenance ticker too but I would blush to put it on my sidebar right now.

Speaking of tickers, Aidan has recently been fascinated with a wind-up alarm clock. He carries it everywhere. I can hear it behind me somewhere right now though neither Aidan nor the clock is in sight right now, which gives me this Captain Hook sort of feeling.

I think it may be a good opportunity to work with clocks a bit because the Spell to WRite and Read curriculum has some activities to work with clock faces in order to prepare for directionality in writing. It also has some activities for children with gross motor delays who are otherwise ready to learn to spell and read. I really like this program and have been studying it this week trying to figure out how to get it off the ground for Kieron, Aidan and Patrick.

The other ticking thing that has been fascinating Aidan recently is his old oxygen saturation monitor. He discovered it under a dresser and had me reassemble it. It makes a high-pitched tick which changes tone as the oxygen levels and heartrate fluctuate. He keeps checking his sats and announcing the results with great enthusiasm.

The speech therapist is working on "functions" with him, so she showed him a train and asked him what it does. He said, "It takes you to Hanford and Bakersfield!" That's because we rode on the Amtrak with him to convey his older sister part of the way to Santa Paula for a visit to Thomas Aquinas College (and from thence, to the San Francisco Walk for Life. .... the last time Clare was in SF was related to Aidan's liver transplant and subsequent hospital stays, so going back to SF brought back all kinds of associations with that time in our lives).

a bit more on resolutions and how they work here

The David Allen system "Getting Things Done" helped me see the connection between the big picture "important but not urgent" goals and the micro-task "actionable steps" that make the goal come into actual being. I thought I'd try to describe what I have learned and am still learning since it seems to be more of a process than an outcome.

First, actions ought to be set in time so that they actually happen. For me this is the tricky part; it does not come naturally, but if I remember to peg the actions down into a time frame and frame them into verbs, they are much more likely to actually occur.

Some examples from my list of resolutions in my last post -- the resolutions themselves, and then some possible actionable steps:

• Travelling the rest of the way to Rivendell. (ride the exercise bike for 3 miles a day).
• Keep to my target weight range. (start a food journal again, since my good habits have been slipping).
• Eat properly and make proper food for my family (more vegetables on the shopping list; regular eating times; browse through cookbooks every Sunday afternoon).
• Write my story (Liam suggested waking up at 7 am every morning to write for an hour or two, and this is working, though 7:30 is a bit more like it).
• Reading the Great Books of the Western World (get the books, which I just did by spending some Christmas money at Advanced Book Exchange; a second step might be to set aside a half hour or so to actually read every day)

And so on. You see, I wouldn't want to set my resolutions down in the micro-task form because I wouldn't be motivated to keep them -- for me, that would be like seeing the twigs on the trees and completely missing the forest.

But merely pondering vista-level goals doesn't work either because those are assumed. "preserve personal and family health" "further my education and that of my kids" "build a strong family culture"-- those are helpful in prioritizing and in setting my life direction, but not so much useful for planning goals, because in themselves they don't indicate any strategy.

The middle-ground goals are the ones that work for me because I can change the strategy as necessary. When Liam goes back to school and we start homeschooling again, waking up at 7 to write might not work because I have to plan my homeschooling during that time. If I get the "buying more vegetables" down into a routine, I may want to switch over to some other actionable step in the pursuit of family health. So the action steps might change, but hopefully the goals will stay current (I'll let you know).

David Allen says that sometimes, when a project or goal is not getting done, the problem is that it hasn't been broken down into a task that is concrete and immediate enough. This has been helpful for me to remember; it falls under the category of "preparation" that I mentioned in my last post.

That is, when I'm procrastinating, it's often because the task is too complex, even if it seems simple on the surface. Sometimes I find myself procrastinating on a phone call, for example, and once I think about it, I realize that I have to find the phone number and say, get my insurance card out of my purse. Those are the real "first steps" before the phone call can take place. I used to simply scold myself for procrastination, but that was not helpful, because it didn't address the real problem -- that I was bogged down in procedural details, or sometimes in an emotional morass -- sometimes I hold back on a phone call because I am scared to make it, for example. But once I know what the problem is, I can usually manage to address it.

Those vista-level, big picture life goals? They are helpful in a different way. They give me a vision. Every once in a while it is valuable to look over one's life and see if it's generally going the way it ought to. For me it is valuable, though challenging, to try to picture my "dream life." It's challenging because it's discouraging. But it really does help. I look around me at people I know and what their lives are like; I read books that put substance to my dreams; I look at my hopes and wishes and try not to discard them too soon because of missing pieces.

The final corollary to all this is that my cornerstone goal is probably the last one, to sit down with my goals every couple of weeks or month and see if the proximate, actionable-steps need to be revised or as the special needs jargon has it, "carried over" -- continued until mastered. If I do this consistently I will have way more chance of getting the rest of it done (as opposed to forgetting all about it). At the same time I can try to reflect on the big-picture, "remote" goals. And I can decide if the mediate-level goals need to be reprioritized. That is idealistic, but if I do the first part regularly, I'll be at the 75% level at least.

I notice that different things shift to higher priority at different times. Right now, we are on vacation so lesson planning and homeschooling is on the back burner and informal family time is up in front place. At another time, the household management gets a higher billing (usually in the summer, when I'm setting things up for the next year). This is part of the seasonal focus I've been thinking about a lot through our years of family life.

Random Thoughts on Goals

That last post about resolutions was quite jumbled. Sorry, but I can't figure out how to improve it. The story I'm writing even though Nanowrimo is over is going quite nicely, and it must use a different part of my brain because I can't seem to write a blog post I'm happy with.

Liam and I agreed to wake up at 7 every morning to work on our stories, and that's made all the difference, so I'm going to use that as a paradigm for something I wanted to remember about methods in setting out resolutions.

Goal-setting ought to be a process, not just a onetime thing. I think that's important. Different things will work at different times. I used to think there was a problem with my follow-through if something that worked once didn't work twice, but now I think it's more along the lines of: You can't step in the exact same river twice. It may be the same river, but not the same water. Newman says that people, being finite, have to change in order to keep their ground.

Also, it has been helping me to remember that there is a flow between larger goals and smaller action steps. Maybe that's another way of talking about the river. If I can tie a simple action step to my big picture goal, the goal is much more likely to get carried through. I think that is the idea behind some of the traditional Catholic "mental prayer" guidelines. They are often set in terms of "Considerations; Affections; Resolutions." You think about something with your mind, then try to involve your heart, then your will.

So take my goal of story-writing. I want to keep writing my story, and eventually have a finished product. So I plan my plotline, ponder the happiness of having a story to work on -- but then a simple practical idea like "get up at 7 am and write for an hour" is what actually makes the difference in doing it.

I know there are people who find the practical ideas easier.

Resolutions and Retrospectives

I thought that since I came across Running River Latin School's reminder "It's that time of year again," that I would try to think about some of the resolutions I've made -- last year and this year -- and some resolutions made by other folk as well, gathered by Leonie in 2007 in this carnival.

Here is the short list form of my resolutions for this year:

• Make it the rest of the way to Rivendell. Then find another journey to go on.
• Stay in my target weight range.
• Eat properly and make decent food for my family.
• Continue our family story society (which means continue my story, which means getting past writer's block).
• Keep the under-structure of our house organized (that means, though the floor might get messy, we have a cleaning and organization system that works so we can find things we want and avoid things we don't want, like super-bacteria.)
• Same with time management.
  
• Cycle back through the 2007 Learning Goals, on a more practical level this time.
  
• Study 5 encyclicals, 4 GBWW, and the Bible in English with a regular habit of reference to the Greek and Latin (There! That's concrete!)
  
• Spend time with my family -- reading, games, conversations, travels and traditions. Schedule this in and plan accountability checks.
• Look over my goals at regular times -- once a month -- and see how I'm doing on them.
  

Now for the long and rambling retrospective bit:

One of the things I like about blogging is the easy accountability. All my other New Years' resolutions have been buried in a notebook somewhere with a bunch of other notebooks in a back closet. I never see them again. But with blogging, all you have to do is type in the search box and you can see what you did and failed to do. Clarity.

I see that last year I did fair to middling on most of my resolutions.

For the household goal -- last year it was Celebrating Abundance. This year I'd like to come to terms with my household economy. The etymology of "economics" is "household management" -- oikos, house, and numein, manage, according to this site. I am feeling like I have been on a bit of a false track on the management bit. I don't think I can put it into words yet but I hope to be able to eventually. But as far as a specific goal -- last year I got quite a bit better at organizing my time and space under the surface. The house and time management still has surface glitches but I can find things and remember things better than I could last year. My Heart of Home blog helped me with this so I will continue that.

For the "holos" -- sound mind in sound body -- goal:

• I didn't make it all the way to Rivendell, but I am two thirds of the way there. Acquiring Shadowfax, or at least Bill the Pony, in the form of a Schwinn exercise bike, helped quite a bit .
  
• I lost some weight and then gained some of it back again, but I know quite a bit more about how to do it than I did last year, at least.
  
• I really did progress in respecting my health. You will have to take my word for it since it is difficult to quantify.
  

For the learning goals:

• I did pretty well on the Learning Goals for 2007. I'd give that a 2/3rds too. I am going to cycle back through them this year, hopefully on a more practical level. The idea of devoting each month to pondering a method was very useful.
• I think I shall extend it by pondering on a different "habit" or virtue every month. Making a list of those will have to wait though.
  
• My academic self education goals are listed in the "this year" link above. I wanted to read the whole Bible in Greek and Latin, peruse every encyclical written in history, and go through the Great Books of the Western World. But I will settle for less than that (see list above).
  

For the big picture:

Once again I have a new take on Age quod Agis -- well, it is an old take, but I am thinking about it in a new way. This year I'm focusing on another motto of St Maximilian Kolbe's:

Preparation—Action—Conclusion.

Simple, but rich. I would particularly like to focus on the Preparation part of this because it's very often where I fall down. Oddly, my developmentally delayed 8 year old Aidan is a bit of a mentor for me in this. For instance, when I started kneading pizza dough, he immediately gets out the pizza pans and oil. When I am frying bacon, he grabs some paper towels and arranges them on the counter beside me so that I can put them on there. When we are at Mass, he knows exactly at what point in the service to look for the offering envelope (he is the one who puts the gift into the basket). I could give more examples. He falls down on conclusion (always forgets to put his shoes away so there are some epic hunts for where he decided to leave them each time) but he is quite gifted at anticipation. Why can't I do that? So that's my vague "theme" for this year -- to try to think ahead. Astonishing how difficult it is for me.

The tips I quoted last year said to make specific resolutions and goals that could be easily quantified. That is no doubt good advice. But I notice the ones that really make a difference in my life are the Quadrant II ones. ... the first things first ones. I think from what I understand about Covey's system, the Quadrant II focus is supposed to keep you from always having to put out fires -- or trying to grab for the paper towels when the bacon is already on the point of being too crisp and you don't remember exactly where you put the paper towel roll anyway. Thank you, Aidan. But those preparation activities are meant, in turn, to be informed by big-picture life decisions. So it's good to get those straight because that prevents you from dashing wildly off in all directions. There is a good post here on goal setting that makes the point that goal setting, as opposed to scheduling, is a good way to build motivation and manage time, rather than be managed by it. It is a useful skill to teach your children -- or be taught by them.

ETA: Food for Thought for the New Year by Et Tu? (Hat Tip: The Genial Hearth)

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.

May is for Nature Study

This month, my Learning Goal is a natural -- literally, I guess. Nature Study!

I have just started a nature almanac for myself -- in notebook form, not blogging right now. But I'm thinking of starting a nature blog as a family project. I've also resolved to take the children out on a nature walk several times a week. Having a camera this year gives me some motivation.

Here's Ambleside's Nature rotation
Here's MacBeth's Opinion on nature study
Here is Anna Botsford Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study online in PDF and other formats.

Here is the Sierra National Forest where we live. This path is quite near our house, so even Aidan with his limited mobility (mild CP) can go on an easy nature hike.




Here is what the view from our house looks like right now.


Yes, it's snowing today! Good thing I am a procrastinator and didn't have my garden in or anything : ).

April is for Poetry

My Learning Goal for this month will be about Poetry. This was an easy call, since April seems to be National Poetry Month. HT: Mental Multivitamin.

This one will be fun!

Learning Goals: March is for Century Books

Ah, I just realized it is March already and time to move on to a new Monthly Learning Goal.
January was Notebooking.
February was Narration

One side benefit is that I realize that we've actually started doing a bit in the other areas without specifically having it on the agenda. What should we focus on for March? I wanted to save the Nature Study focus for spring -- and it is definitely not spring here yet.

I think the March focus should be Century Books, or Plutarch and Shakespeare. Now, which one??

When I first wrote out the learning goals, I couldn't decide whether to have a Habit per month or deal with Habits generally in one month. I think I will do both! Focus on habits generally speaking during one month, but try to focus on a particular habit each month.

This month is covered habit-wise, I think because we are all doing various Lenten practices. In general, for Lent, in addition to the individual devotions and fasts everyone does, I try to put a blanket over the house. .... like the purple strips of cloth I've put over the pictures and statues. We don't cut out everything but we minimize. Plus, since Lent is about almsgiving as well, we try to think about others' convenience more than of our own. I have been trying extra hard to listen to my domestic monastery bells. I think I hear one or two right now.....

Time for Taking Care of Yourself?

I really enjoy the blog My Simpler Life and this post really struck me:
Reason #6 to simplify your life: Your health is being neglected.

If you don’t have time to maintain the body you have, you are doing too much. You can’t just drop your health and think that there will be no future consequences. You know there will be - you just don’t want to look that far ahead. And there are consequences right now - getting sick more often, being tired a lot, getting headaches, heartburn and stomach aches.

You don’t have to have the perfect body. You just need to care at least minimally for what’s been given to you - exercising 3 times a week, eating mostly right, getting enough sleep, brushing and flossing and getting your checkups.

My life is not that complicated, really. Yet still these things seem to end up in last place on my priority list. I wonder why that is? Can it be that if I have time to eat well and exercise, my guilt triggers tell me that I'm not busy enough?

Hmm... something to think about this Lent.

Learning Goals: February is for Narration

I listed my learning goals for 2007 last December. January was devoted to notebooking. I think I did learn a lot about the purposes, principles and practicalities of notebooks. As for the kids: Clare has been keeping notebooks for many years, but I think she was born with the instinct and at most I provided supplies and example. Most recently she's made some scrapbooks that are much more beautiful than anything I've accomplished yet in the way of notebooking. Brendan keeps a spiral, like Liam and I do. It's basically a commonplace book -- theirs are generally for story ideas and drawings and that kind of thing. Their father keeps a similar notebook of his game design ideas. So basically, the older ones have all made notebooks work for them in their own way and maybe that isn't so bad. But for the younger ones, I'm going to revisit the notebooking topic when I get to century books and nature notebooks later in the year.

Now for this month -- February -- I'm going to focus on Narration.

Here are Karen's and Melissa's blogs on reluctant narrators.

Here is Tammy Glaser's page on Narration. I like her whole site: Reflections on CM's 20 Principles. Ambleside has a section on narration. Here is a Parents Review article, Notes on Narration. And here is an article on oral narration by one of my favorite bloggers Cindy at Dominion Family. Here is a blog Narration vs Questioning by Higher Up and Further In with some links to more Parents' Review articles. Narration by Karen Andreola. I guess that is enough for now!

Internet Regula/Resolution

In response to this thread on internet communities I started an informal Internet Regula for myself which went like this:

• Read and write mostly when everyone is asleep.
• Don't do this every night.
• Do research and quick specific emails during the day.
• Have a notebook to log what I want to accomplish online so I don't drift.
• Also, log what I did in order to keep track.
• Pray: AMDG -- devote internet time to God.

It made me realize that in the theme of Celebrating Abundance, I might be more grateful for the gifts the internet gives me if I back off just a bit. So that was an informal New Years' Resolution that I didn't post because I wanted to make sure I could keep it!

It was hard, which is a good sign -- muscle burn! Though it has been getting easier over time and now I have some habits to replace the old ones. Our chair by the fireplace is a great help! I also notice that I'm more keyed into what's going on around the house, and staying off the computer myself helps me keep the children away from the screen a bit more.

I think I was wrapping too much of my identity up online, which made it less "real". I wonder if this is universally true -- getting overinvolved makes things "less real", whereas a bit of detachment and "agency" puts things in a more real light. A half-formed thought there, and half-formed it will have to stay.

I notice that it's difficult to get back into the swing of things when I am not on here as much. I could easily drop off almost completely, though I've been trying to keep up with my online journal.

Karen E posted these guidelines for regulating things in our lives, according to St Ignatius:

• Things/people God wants us to enjoy

• Things/people God wants us to endure (or suffer)

• Things/people God wants us to remove (because they lead us to sin)

• Things/people God wants us to sacrifice (willingly give up, even though they don't lead us to sin)

She also has posted a prayer to St Isidore that you can say before going online:

Almighty and eternal God, who created us in Thy image and bade us to seek after all that is good, true and beautiful, especially in the divine person of Thy only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, grant we beseech Thee that, through the intercession of Saint Isidore, bishop and doctor, during our journeys through the internet we will direct our hands and eyes only to that which is pleasing to Thee and treat with charity and patience all those souls whom we encounter. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Charlotte Mason Resolutions

(Clare Francis and Patrick Gabriel -- when I first discovered CM, through reading For the Children's Sake, Clare was not much older than Patrick is now)'

I mentioned that one of my New Years Resolutions was to read Charlotte Mason's Home Education. I have been following Amyable's CM Blog and also marking up my own copy at home. The Simply Charlotte Mason blog has a series going on Habits which is good reading, and we may have a Real Learning discussion of one of her books. I thought I would like to write down some notes on here as I read through Home Education, partly trying to understand her words in their context and as she intended them (I by no means claim to be an expert) and partly to ponder about how her ideas have influenced my homeschooling and mothering and what I intend to do or think about as a result of the rereading.

Loveliness of New Years Resolutions is up at Living without School.

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!