Thread: Weekly Poll: Homeschool Resolutions for 2011

I think it is probably impossible to generalize our personal homeschooling resolutions for the coming year into a single poll, but you don't think that will stop me from trying, do you??

I can tell you that my own resolution is to work in even more life skills into our learning. My oldest will be a high school "senior" next year, and I realize that my time with him at home is limited, and although I think I've done a fairly good job of preparing him for the big, wide world, there are still SO many things I know he shouldn't have to learn the hard way. So, that is my goal for this next half of the school year, at least.

What about you???

(you may vote for more than one resolution in this poll)

I resolve to let my children's education be less structured. Infact, I'm allowing my daughter to unschool from January to March while we move into our new home. She has amazed me time and time again at the things she learns without my help or my structured lesson plans. Overall, I would just like to be more laidback in the new year.

Boy, I don't quite know how to answer. I need more structure in my day and household routine, because my youngest really needs it, but I am led to unschool her more, which would be less structure in learning. I guess it is the TJEd idea of structure time, not content.

I voted for more structure in our learning, but I definitely hesitated. Late in the last "term" we hit a brick wall whereby DS all of a sudden didn't want to learn anything HE doesn't come up with himself, thank you very much, and our daily routine got really off kilter. I flirt with the idea of allowing a period of unschooling until he "comes back" as it were, but we just don't have enough resources or opportunities to draw from where we currently live (and his stubborness has been extremely taxing). So instead I'm going to implement a more structured day than we had previously, in hopes that a set daily rhythm will help (in time) discourage the issues we've had.

I picked two - more structure and more field trips.

More structure because school seems to get put aside whenever anything comes up from a good movie on television to a mild cold. It's not really a big problem since we have no reporting, my kids aren't official age anyway and we are working ahead of where they "need" to be. But, my kids do better with some structure. Given the chance they watch television or play various electronics all day. I really want to cut down on television, computer play, video games (Leapsters and one really old Gameboy), etc.

I put more field trips because I tend to be an introvert and use any excuse to not leave the house. We won a membership to our local museum so I'm hoping to go there at least a couple times a month. The rest I can probably justify putting off until warmer weather but I'll really have to work on it then.

I feel like our days are too unstructured. The kids are inclined to run off to play as soon as one lesson is done and I'm constantly corralling them. I feel like I'm chasing Thing One and Thing Two with a net. I'm hoping to find things the kids can do, like independent reading, while I work with the other one on math or writing.

Like Dottieanna, I'm also inclined to stay home (and the kids too--we're a family of homebodies!). We just got a membership to the science museum and the local homeschooling group has a board game day every week, so we'll try to venture forth more.

I would also like to have a no non-educational videos rule on weekdays. The kids were pretty good in the fall about not asking to watch something, but we've slipped lately.

I am trying to get started earlier, DO more, and encorporate some music in to our day.

I resolved to play more games. We did a LOT of games last year as part of our schooling, but this year, we had more formal curriculum, so we sort of got away from it. I miss it and the kids miss it too. They're a bit older, so I think the curriculum is good (last year we didn't have any for K except handwriting) but I'm trying to find a better balance. Besides, so many games - Bananagrams, Rat-a-Tat-Cat, Knock Out, Mastermind, Mad Libs, etc. etc. - are just as educational as our curricula anyway.

So tough! Great poll - I was actually searching "homeschool new years resolutions" and this came up on google. =) Duh - shoulda looked here first. =)

I voted 'other'. Our structure and schedule is good (though tweaked a bit for 2011; it's both more and less structured, if that makes sense, lol). My resolution is to keep doing what we've been doing - keep the parts that work for us and be flexible enough to make changes when necessary. I also am resolving to add more academic extra-curriculars in this year (4H, science fair - stuff like that).
I want to get back to reading TO the kids several times per week. We used to do that more and I miss it.
Other than that, we're pretty good.
~h