Summer Goals

The end of the school year is met with great excitement around here.  And it's not just my kids: I LOVE having these guys around all day.  They're some of my very favorite people, and while I'm not going to pretend that we don't have our fair share of bugging/being bugged-ness, summer break is just about my favorite time of year.

However.

My kids are just like your kids, and would happily spend all of their waking moments watching movies, playing Xbox, and generally letting all brain cells wither and die from unuse.

So in an effort to combat this, several years ago I came up with a great little plan called Summer Goals (as always, I'm a wizard with words).

It's so straightforward it really doesn't need explaining.  But then what would I post about today?  So here goes:

Every year, at the beginning of the summer, my family sits down and sets goals for the summer.  There are family goals, and personal goals.  There are physical goals, and skill- or talent-based goals.  Sometimes I make a poster, and sometimes I make a spreadsheet.  Sometimes we all do push-ups every day, one time one of my kids learned to knit and made a scarf.  It doesn't matter at all, just as long as everybody participates, and there's a way to keep track of it all.  Because if you can't tell if you accomplished your goal, then what's the point?

This summer, our goals are admittedly, on the light side.  Our summer break is only 10 weeks long, to start with, and four of those weeks we'll be in Washington/Oregon/Utah.  Hooray!!!  Maybe we could really crack down and get a ton done while we're traveling, but I'd like a vacation too, so we lowered our expectations for that month.

We have two family goals: 

We each have a personal goal, tailored to each person's abilities and where we want to improve.  (I didn't include that part of our poster, since some of them are kind of personal.)  One of us is going to get his 2-mile time under 15 minutes, another is doing 2100 sit-ups and push-ups.  One is finishing the early reader set and finishing his first Chapter Book.  One of my children will be cooking for our family for 2 weeks (woo-hoo!!).

We have spreadsheets to track our progress.  We have rewards promised for meeting our goals.

We're on our way!  Happy Summer, everyone!

Kate