CHM113:How to Set Homeschool Learning Goals

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Hi, I'm Demetria and you're listening to the Christian Homeschool Moms Podcast.

So welcome back to the new year.

This is my very first podcast of 2019, so I'm excited about that and I just wanted to say welcome back and I hope that you had a wonderful holidays.

I know a lot of us were super busy running around with family, friends and get togethers.

I our family in particular, we just kind of relaxed and we don't have family here in California, so we just kind of relaxed and hung out with each other and made a lot of food and had a good time.

So my whole idea of the holidays for me were just to really provide family and and just provide the festivities that we could enjoy as a family.

So we just did a lot of cooking, a lot of gingerbread cookies, a lot of chocolate chip cookies and desserts.

And again, we know we had like a big holiday feast and loved the turkey and the dressing and all the great fixings that we do over the holidays.

So that's what our family does.

We do open presents on Christmas morning and we read about the account of the Savior's birth.

And we just had a great time with our church.

We attended a couple of different candlelight ceremonies, and those were beautiful and just really brought us some great memories that we can remember and just something that we can look back on forever.

And I'm just glad that we captured those moments and I do have those on Instagram and Facebook.

So if you follow me on any of those, you'll see what's going on in our personal life and you can follow me on Instagram Metria Zynga.

And so you'll find me there and on Facebook as well under Demetria Zynga.

That's my personal account.

But as far as my Facebook page, I want to invite each of you to come to the Christian Homeschool Moms page and like the page, and then come and collaborate with us and just hang out and ask questions and talk to each other.

I just want to make it more of a community where we can talk.

Now, it's not a group, but it is a page.

So if you have a question or something that you want me to talk about here on the podcast, any suggestions for topics or you just want to see what's going on here at the podcast and blog, I would suggest you come on over to the Christian Homeschool Moms Film Facebook page.

So I am inviting you to do that and I will leave a link in the show notes to that so that you can click right over and join.

So today's topic is going to be about setting goals because it is a new year and I am all about goal setting this year for 2019 because I realize that if you don't set goals, you won't accomplish any.

So I want to set them so that I can have at least something to aspire to this year.

Now, I've gone on real just binge goal setting this week because I've really been thinking about how to change things in my life so that I'm able to accomplish even more in the small amount of time that we have allotted to us.

And so most of us have about eight, eight or so hours a day where we can work and the other eight where we sleep.

And so we have 24 hours in a day.

And what we do with that time is crucial.

So what do we do with the remaining eight hours?

So that's the question at hand, is, is how do we use this time effectively?

And I have another blog where I teach women how to blog and build a business with a blog.

And so I've been talking a lot over there@mompreneursandheels.com how to create goals for blogging.

And so since I'm doing that, I may as well kind of transfer that same information over here about homeschooling.

It's the same idea so that if, even if you are writing a blog and you need to build that blog in that presence.

So it's the same thing with homeschooling if you need to, if you're thinking of increasing the awareness in your family about a specific topic, you want to teach your kids something.

You have a goal to make sure that they have certain values in their lives than you.

You really want to sit down and hash out a lot of goals for your family and then if you hit them, great.

And if you don't meet all of them, that's okay.

But at least you were striving towards that is influential for your family and that brings you all in the right direction.

So without goals, we tend to just sort of flounder around and we don't do, we don't get anything accomplished.

We don't do what we set out to do.

So in this podcast, I really just want to encourage you to set homeschool learning goals.

So how are your mid semester goals coming along?

This is the middle of the semester.

If you're listening to this, in January, in which I'm recording this, it's the middle of the semester for us.

So.

Or the middle of the school year, I should say, for us, I, like I said, we are really into setting our goals this year.

So I would like to know, did you maybe set a laundry list of homeschool learning goals way back in August or September, but then now you're wondering, what happened?

What happened to all those goals that were on your list?

Did you lose sight of the goals that you had in front of you, or did you just give up?

Did it become overwhelming?

Were there too many goals and were they the right goals?

So whether it's the middle of a homeschool year or the beginning of a homeschool year, sometimes we just need a bit of motivation just to keep us moving.

And I found that sometimes we can fall into a slump.

And when we've set our intention for our homeschools, then our days and our weeks will flow a lot more smoothly.

So, again, in this podcast, that's what we're learning about is keeping our goals and keeping motivated.

So the first tip I have for you, and I have quite a few in this show, we'll have four tips to setting those goals, those learning goals.

Okay?

And the first tip I have for you is to let your child choose.

I find that it helps to get kids involved in our homeschool planning.

I like to sit down with my daughters and ask them each, you know, what they want to accomplish at the beginning of the school year, and we follow this up again in the middle of the school year.

So somewhere around January, we'll do this again.

But when my kids create their own goals, it really gives them a voice in their own education, and it helps them to see what it is they want and gives them that intrinsic motivation to really set out goals that are important for them.

So we'll just sit down and we'll talk about these goals.

And some of the ways I do this is through brainstorming and brain dumps, and I carve out special time for each child.

I'll just sit down with each one of them, and with a notebook and a pen, we create a brain dump page.

And we just hash out all these ideas we have for what they want to achieve this school year.

And then, of course, I have my ideas that I throw in there.

But mainly it's just about them getting their ideas on paper about what they want to accomplish, what they want to learn about, what's important to them.

And I ask questions like, well, what do you want to learn about?

Or what topics would you like to explore that you've never had the chance to.

Or I'll ask, what are your favorite subjects we should focus on the most?

Or what are your least favorite subjects?

And then what can we do to make those subjects that you don't like so much more interesting and more meaningful to you?

Or if there's special helps that we need to put in place, some tutoring or just some extra support, what can we do to support you with that?

And then I'll ask about special projects they may want to do or field trips and places they want to go.

And overall, what do they want to achieve?

So I really just want to put the ball in their court and have my kids to take ownership again of their learning.

And so having them sit down with a pen and paper with me and hashing out goals for the year really helps for them to take ownership of that.

And we'll write them down.

And then what I find is that having conversations with my kids like these, it's so invaluable because I learned so much about them and the way they think through processes and the way they're perceiving their homeschool experience.

And so that helps me to be a better mentor and teacher to them.

The second tip I have for you is to determine the purpose of your goals.

So what are the purpose of all these goals that you have that you're writing down?

Because although we may like to accomplish all of these things we've just written down in this huge brainstorming session, what would be the purpose of doing all of this?

Right?

So certainly the longer the list, the less we can accomplish.

Because again, we're all limited to just a few few hours a day to really get it all done.

So that's why we have to understand and know the why and what we do.

Because yes, setting goals is important, but not understanding why we've made particular goals of utmost importance in our home schools will bring confusion later on down the road.

So it's important to know why the why behind every decision that we make so that we can honor our time together as a family.

So you want to ask questions like, is our purpose to help other people?

Is it to understand more about a topic, or is it to learn a particular skill?

And why are we learning about this topic?

Why are we learning this particular skill?

So let's be careful not to write down goals that just keep us busy, but really have no particular purpose?

Because busy doesn't always equate to purposeful.

And many of us understand what that means when we've gotten so busy just running around in circles and not accomplishing anything for specific reasons.

So we want to make sure that our goals are in line with our values and our purpose.

Thirdly, you want to break down those learning goals because again, as you've kind of dumped everything onto the paper, you might find that these goals are pretty lofty and they may seem unreachable and unattainable.

So once you have these goals, you want to break them into smaller chunks, make them small, make them manageable, and you want to also make sure that they're short term so that you don't become overwhelmed with goals that reach far, far out in the future.

So short term, smaller goals are really important, especially if you have small children.

Remember that if you're teaching a small child how to set goals, the smaller the goals are, the better.

For example, and I'm going to give you specific examples of things that you might consider to be goals for your younger child.

So some basic skills you might want them to learn.

For example, or make the bed every morning before school starts.

Or pick up toys before bath and bedtime every night.

Or read a book with mom every night.

See, these are small, small goals.

Or write their name every day for practice just writing their name.

Or be kind to someone every day.

Or follow directions for mom and dad.

Those are things that are, they're small goals.

And of course, for older kids, you can have them take larger goals and then break them down into those smaller chunks that would make sense to them.

For example, my high school daughter wants to learn digital art.

She's also learning how to drive.

So she has already started working on that goal and has already received her driver's permit and is now currently working on getting her practice hours in.

So with digital art, for example, let's say that her goal is to sell digital art on Etsy.

So then her goals list might look something like this.

So she may want to become familiar with the Wacom tablet.

I think it's called Wacom Tablet.

Wacom, Wacom.

Or watch the lynda.com videos to learn to use Adobe Illustrator.

She may want to watch digital art videos on lynda.com just to get familiar with the whole field of digital art and then watch videos on YouTube to learn how to sell that digital art on Etsy.

Right?

And then she'll want to purchase all the necessary art materials.

So these are all little steps.

Now, it's not the goal itself.

The goal itself is to learn to use digital art, to learn digital art and to sell it on Etsy.

But these are the small steps that will lead up to the final, final result of the final goal.

And then another thing she may want to do after she purchases the materials is to practice making a few of these art pieces to give away to family and friends.

Then maybe she'll want to make a total of about 10 items to sell and then open up her Etsy store.

And then she'll have to learn the business of how to sell these items on Etsy.

So all of these are steps to toward her goal, but they are her goals broken into small pieces.

So she can do each of these separately and it won't feel so overwhelming.

And it will make sense because they are actionable steps she can take.

So writing down the detailed step specifics of goals makes it so much so, so much easier to accomplish.

And then the next tip I have for you is to celebrate your achievement and your successes.

Because once you've done all this, you know, goal planning, you definitely want to celebrate because you are finally working towards the things that you have decided you want to accomplish.

And so no matter how big or small, when you take time out of your schedule to plan ahead and make these goals, it's important that you honor the time you spend spent and acknowledge your achievements all throughout the year.

Because that's a lot of time to plan it out and then to see that you are accomplishing those goals.

You should honor that and you should applaud yourself and applaud your children, applaud your family for achieving these goals.

So a couple of things you can do to celebrate a fun event like that is, you know, maybe order pizza for dinner or go out to a favorite family restaurant.

Or you may want to take the younger kids in if you can stomach it.

And if you can actually get through a visit at Chuck E. Cheese, you may want to take the younger kids there for some fun or maybe somewhere else getting tickets maybe to your child's favorite sporting event somewhere, or just any event that your older student would really enjoy.

That would be just an awesome, fabulous reward for having met maybe a really large goal.

Or you can take a special trip as a family to celebrate that you've achieved some goals this year.

So think about the things you can do to reward the goals that your kids have set.

And lastly, I want you to just remember to keep reevaluating your goals because they will change.

Remember that goal planning is an ongoing event and that in order to make progress, it's important to stop and to re evaluate from time to time.

That is the way to ensure that you are making the type of progress you need is to stop every once in a while and just see, you know, how are things going and check in with yourself, check in with your kids, make it a point to have this goals re evaluation session, whether it's over a holiday, spring break, fall break, or even just a weekend, and just to see how things are going.

And if you're pleased with your progress, you need to keep doing it, because that's working.

So don't stop.

And if it's not working, then you will want to sit down and edit those goals and reevaluate them, maybe delete them and start over, or just tweak them to meet your needs.

You know, we have to do this in our family every few months because it seems that my kids just keep on growing and growing and growing and evolving so quickly.

And the kids, the two girls that, that were one way five years ago are not that way today.

And the changes that have taken place to me are just so drastic.

And I can't wrap my brain around all of the changes, both intellectually, physically, emotionally, mentally, socially.

Everything is so different with my children today than it was when I first began this podcast.

And so as they grow and as, as they mature, I realize that our goals have to change with our changes, and they.

Our goals have to mature with our maturity.

So it doesn't take long for, you know, a few weeks to turn into a few months.

And before I know it, my child's interests have just completely changed.

And the child that was interested in doing digital art today may not be interested next year.

Or maybe she's changed gears and shifted, and now the child that was completely interested in art is now more interested in music.

So then you just kind of have to change with your kids as they grow into who they are and begin to understand more of their identity.

So what was important to my daughter a couple of months ago, months ago may not be a priority.

And at that point, we make changes and we tweak as necessary to reflect her growth and her maturity.

So remember that constant reassessment is crucial because our kids grow so much and so quickly, and family dynamics are bound to change, and so are your goals.

So that's okay.

Keep making those goals because they're really important for your family just to have clarity and direction with your homeschool lifestyle.

And so I hope that these tips have been helpful for you, and I would love for you to again come join us over at the Facebook group for further discussion.

And I hope to bring more great content to you really soon.

And would love to continue podcasting more regularly, but we'll see how that goes.

I would like to get on more of a schedule, but again, that is one of my goals for the year is to schedule out my content for both my blogs, both this one and my Mompreneurs and Heels blog, so that I'm able to give constant, consistent content for each of you.

So those of you who are interested only in homeschooling, and then those of you who are interested also in starting your own blogs and making money with your blog.

And so I will leave a link to that in the show notes if you are interested in starting your blog.

Because I actually just created a course for mompreneurs on how to start a blog.

So I will leave a link to that E course.

It's called the Beginners Blogging Academy.

It is open now.

So that course is open.

You can come join at any time and learn to build your blog from start to finish.

So I would love to just plug that right now and just tell you that it's open and it's ready and I'm accepting students and I would love to have you, if that's something you'd like to start doing.

I know a lot of moms like to blog about their homeschools and their lifestyle and and it's something that I love doing.

So I would like to encourage you to do that.

If that's something you want to do, then I want to help you do that.

So that's over again@mompreneursandheels.com and I also have a YouTube channel there.

So I have two if you're interested in following our homeschool journey and getting some extra tips that I don't share here at the podcast, but that are in abundance at my YouTube channel as well.

If you want to go there and get a little bit extra and see kind of inside my world and get some encouragement there as well.

My channel is called Mom Zest and and if you just head on over to YouTube and just Google or search Momzest, you'll find me there.

Have several videos, lots of videos that have been archived from the time my kids were really tiny.

So they're big now.

So you'll see our growth there and you'll see how we've reevaluated and changed our goals in our curriculum over the years and how things have changed so much with our family.

So you can join me there.

But I also have a YouTube channel just about business and just about blogging and teaching moms how to blog, so you can come to that channel as well if you'd like.

And that one's just under my name.

It's under Demetria Zynga.

And that's my other channel that I would like to plug for you today in some upcoming podcasts.

I do have some guests coming up really soon, so I encourage you to continue listening and see who's going to be featured next go round because there are some lineups for my for this podcast and I can't wait to present these guests to you and, and see, see what you think and, and how they're.

I know they're going to bring so much value to you and I know they're going to just really bring great stuff to us.

I am excited about what our guests, our future guests are going to bring on this podcast this year.

I believe 2019 is going to be an awesome year.

And so I'm really excited about our guests coming up.

And if you know of someone who may want to be interviewed and featured on our homeschool podcast, please let me know.

Before we end this podcast today, I'm just going to give you a couple of updates on the blog so that you can sort of see what's been going on behind the scenes on the blog over the holidays.

And so we ran a giveaway for journaling, and it was a book about journaling with your children that Andrea Thorpe has written.

And so someone did win that giveaway and so I'm really pleased to have been able to connect with them.

And Andrea has sent you the book and so we're excited about that.

But journaling is something that I doing with my daughter just to connect with her.

It's a parent child journal.

Really appreciated that.

So I'm happy about that.

And then, then over the holidays, I did A post on 5 benefits of music education for your child.

So that was a great post.

I just wanted to share why music education has been important for our family.

And we started official homeschool p or official piano lessons for my youngest daughter.

And then right now we're just kind of taking a little break from the lessons that we were attending every week.

And I'm actually taking over the teaching of those lessons.

So I'm teaching her piano at home.

But we're just really enjoying bringing music into our home.

So that's another thing to check out.

And then I have a post on what I wish I knew as a newbie homeschooler, which is also a video that you, if you click on the blog post, it will take you to the video as well that's embedded within the video within the post.

So I also did a post on how to play the Column Edition game using Right Start Math.

I love the Right Start Math card games I'm using currently Math Mammoth.

But the card games on Right Start Math are awesome.

So I just actually purchased only the games and I've really just been loving that with my daughter.

So I have a whole post and video on how we played the Column Edition game if you want to check that out.

Then of course there are some winter crafts and activities for your homeschool that were written by our guest poster Annabelle Carter Shorts.

So you want to check that out.

And lastly, I would like to offer you the opportunity to be a guest blogger at Christian Homeschool Moms.

As I'm growing this blog this year in 2019, I realized that I would like to have guest bloggers back on I realized that having guest bloggers back would be perfect this year as I start to grow the platform and just have more of you share your story and your voices.

So I would love to partner with you.

If you feel that you're a great writer and you want to share your homeschool experiences and have a blog that you want to promote, think about maybe sharing some of that with this audience.

And I would love to have you on as a guest blogger.

So get in touch with me.

And I also will go ahead and post in the show notes a form that you can fill out to apply to become a guest blogger.

So that application will be open at the time of this publication.

Once this podcast is published, the application should be open and ready for you to fill out.

So I hope that you have a wonderful, wonderful week and I plan to come back with more great content and interviews and just more goodies for you.

So thank you for being part of Christian Homeschool Moms and I will talk to you guys later.

Have a blessed week and happy homeschooling.