Monday, January 3, 2011- Planning Educational Goals

AHHH! Wow... 2011 already. Last night as I was crawling into bed, my dh sleepily said, it's already 2011. I mentioned that it's been 2011 for two days. I don't have a problem with writing the '11, yet. I'm thankful for another year :)

This morning we are off to a late start for school. And I'm okay with that! I woke up late. I was tired all day yesterday and even drank coffee off and on throughout the day to help wake me, but I still slept like a log and woke this morning- tired. So I slept in for about an hour.

Today, for the kids' school, I have their coursework all mapped out for them (well, I have it generally written down- they should be able to take the initiative and complete it in full, not just in 'general', if that makes sense!) and it honestly will not take long to get going and get done with the school day. It never does when we focus on it. What I am planning on today is something that I personally haven't tried really with both of them before. We are going to map out some short term and long term goals. We have until May 27, 2011, to finish this school year and there are some things that I want them to focus on but I also want to know what they want to accomplish for themselves.

In the post about our first week's assignments, I forgot to mention that Lee also does Alison courses and they both do Daily News (where they check the major newspapers in different parts of the US- someday I will broaden this to include other countries- and then give me some feedback on what they read). The reason I mentioned that is because my mother in law, who is attending graduate school now and will graduate with her Masters in April, is hoping/planning to open her own psychiatric practice in a year or so. My daughter will be the receptionist :) She will need a lot of computer knowledge and that is why she is doing the Alison courses. The only problem I have with the Alison courses is that some are extremely basic. I know these are free but I don't understand why that means it needs to be inferior to other courses. There are quite a few colleges and universities that offer free courses online, the entire complex course. Click here to see a list by subject. Or if you are interested in Alison or HippoCampus, look on my Links for Schooling by Subject page, near the bottom listed under Sites of Interest for Teaching/Learning.

I know that Lee would like very much to become an artist- professional. But she isn't really interested in real-world drawing; she likes the anime type drawing. She is good at it, too. She bought with birthday money a Tablet (which I've referred to before) as well as an art program for the computer. This Christmas she was given a gift card for Amazon (don't we love Amazon lol) and she purchased another program for the computer. This one animates the drawings that she makes. She can make the scenes/images/etc in this program, or I believe she can import from her other program to animate those images. It is pretty neat. She does have a 'guild' that she has designed and set up on Gaia (perhaps you've heard of it?) that deals with Cats. It's difficult to explain (especially since I, myself, don't quite understand it!). So we have a few things to plan for Lee- short term and long term.

For Fox, I'm not sure he knows what direction he wants to go. And that's okay! He is only 11. I know at this age he would be taking a field trip to the University of Wyoming (or perhaps the Eastern Wyoming College locally) through the public school to see what it is like to be a college student. But I don't think he is in need of that just yet. For him I think the planning needs to be more short-term. By that I mean he needs to focus on what he wants to take away from this year of learning and where he would like to go next year. If he has an idea of what he would like to work towards in terms of a career, I won't discourage him but I don't think he knows yet what that direction might be. 

The planning we do today, I want it to be specific to what we are going to be doing for 'school'. Not "I want to build such and such with my Legos after lunch." I am looking more for "By the end of this school year I want to be finished with my PreAlgebra 2 with Economics book and I want to be able to understand it." Or "I hope to complete the courses from Alison that relate to Microsoft Word, Excel and/or Outlook." Those are the goals I am looking for, I think. Of course, if they came up with something like "I want to have improved my attitude toward learning by the end of this month," I would be quite pleased ;)

There is a page in the TOS Planner that is for goal setting. These are separate formats: Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Semester, and Yearly Goals. I think today when we do our goal planning session, I will print off the first three sheets for each of us and go through them individually. I'm not entirely sure if they have really had much in the way of goal setting before this. I know we do the, "When you are done with this, you can do this..." or one will say "I want to buy a certain thing so I will work for it; I hope to get it by a certain time." We know how to set goals...perhaps it is the follow through that we have a difficult time with ;) 

Anyway, that is my plan for this morning. It may be a difficult day already (if I let it be!)- Fox is in a sour mood... Aha...a goal...Attitude improvement lol.