Winning feels great! Excitement courses through your veins and the thrill of victory fills your lungs to the point where you can’t help but yell out; “I did it! Look what I did!” Setting achievable landmarks and goals that promote winning in your homeschool is an absolutely essential aspect of any planning. One win, no matter how small, stacked neatly above the other, builds a level of confidence that cuts through the challenges and unfamiliar territory like a fork through a stack of fluffy blueberry pancakes.
These goals can help you and your child stay focused and on track, as well as measure progress or reveal areas of concern.
How can you set these goals in place? Why are they so important? How do we make winning as predictable as the sunrise? Let’s find out!
Identify your child’s strengths and weaknesses
Let’s face it, none of us are great at everything. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Our children are no exception. One of the wonderful advantages of homeschooling is being able to customize the curriculum to your child’s specific abilities. Imagine this scenario. You hire a skilled seamstress to sew you a beautiful dress for an elegant night out on the town. You call her up and give her your name and address. That’s it. Not a single measurement is made. How tailored is that dress going to look? You might as well buy one off the rack. Even worse, order one online and hope for the best.
We don’t hope for the best in our homeschools and we certainly don’t hope for the best. Knowing your child’s strengths and weaknesses is like taking precise measurements to tailor your curriculum for that perfect fit. A custom-made education where we can construct a series of truly attainable goals throughout. Goals that promote mastery and success.
Break down long-term goals into smaller, achievable landmarks
Traditional schools are notoriously bad for setting blanket standards and asserting what seems to be a general consensus of benchmarks like ‘Full fluency in reading by the 2nd grade’. While I do agree that the benefits of being able to read at an early age are incredibly advantageous, the whole world doesn’t grind to a halt if your child took an extra year to achieve that goal. Reading fluently and comprehension are huge goals. So what do we do with a giant like that?
Call it baby steps or bite-size chunks, the idea is to break down our main goal into tiny goals that keep the momentum of winning. Conquering one achievable landmark after the next will propel your child’s self-esteem straight through the stratosphere! As one step leads to another, you will arrive at your destination at a pace that never feels rushed. What at first seemed insurmountable, is complete! Another WIN for team {Insert your homeschool here}!
Make goals specific, measurable, and attainable
How can we ensure that our smaller goals promote winning? They need to be specific, well-defined and include a system or process that measures progress. This does not need to resemble the floor-to-ceiling chalkboard in a quantum physics classroom. The key is to keep the goals highly achievable based on your child’s abilities.
Avoid basing your goal system on grade levels. You are free from that arbitrary nonsense! Treat each subject separately because you will soon discover that your child is going to excel in one area of study over the other. Continue to stimulate learning where they perform best. The is no ceiling for improvement. Do they want to keep learning? Keep teaching. On the other hand, we may need to fine-tune our goals in areas they find challenging. Especially when signs of anxiety and frustration begin to mount.
Celebrate milestones
We are thrilled when our children speak their first words and take their first steps. What a joyful experience shared by parents all around the globe! Why stop there? Celebrate success any time your child reaches the milestones you’ve strategically placed throughout your curriculum! Goals will differ in size and we can gauge our celebrations accordingly. Each time we share a win with our children, we are sending a message. They will feel 100% secure in knowing that you are clearly invested in their education and will always be in their corner cheering them through each mastered milestone.
A word of caution. Stay clear of over-praising. That over-the-top commendation gets boring real quick. The diminishing sincerity will lose its luster to the point that the entire cast of Disney on Ice couldn’t raise an eyebrow. We can avoid this accolade faux pas by being specific in our praises. For instance, let’s say that they learned to blend digraphs and consonant blends. For some children that is a huge milestone in phonics. We want to tell them they did amazing work with blending diagraphs and consonant blends. This is why we want to carefully label our goals. This makes it some much easier to give precious commentary on a work well done.
Regularly reassess and adjust goals
You may have paved the straightest road to success possible but you will encounter the odd pothole or obstruction in the road that forces you to tweak that steering wheel and slow down a little. Education is not a sprint. It’s a marathon. It takes planning and a little endurance to work through the hurdles and challenges. This means giving that figurative steering wheel a little nudge from time to time.
This is where regular assessment comes in. ARE the goals and milestones being reached comfortably and relatively stress-free? If not, we need to make the needed adjustments quickly. The faster we spot a flaw, the faster we get back to winning.
Involve your child in the goal-setting process
Imagine how empowered your child would feel if you allowed them to take a degree of ownership in their education. Only in homeschool can we sit down one to one with a student and involve them in the goal-setting process. This would never happen in traditional schooling.
How would you go about doing this? Set up a few highly achievable milestones first. Help them succeed and feel the victory that comes from mastering a particular skill. Then, a dialog begins. Explain the process and why we set milestones. Don’t overcomplicate it. Ask them whether the milestones are too easy or if they think we can expand on them a little more. Kick them up a notch. If they like video games, ask them if it’s time to “Level Up”. Perhaps combining two baby steps into a longer stride.
Learning to set your own goals is an essential life skill that can be learned from a very young age. As adults, setting our own goals and milestones is key to keeping our lives on track while we navigate huge responsibilities amidst a chaotic world that demands our share of our time and resources.
Review
Let’s recap the six steps that will ensure that the goals we set for our children and guaranteed to promote winning!
1) Identify your child’s strengths and weaknesses
2) Break down long-term goals into smaller, achievable landmarks
3) Make goals specific, measurable, and attainable
4) Celebrate milestones
5) Regularly reassess and adjust goals
6) Involve your child in the goal-setting process
By setting landmark goals and milestones, you can help your child stay on track and motivated to learn. You stack one success and win atop another to build self-esteem that is ready to conquer the world! The beauty of it all is that your goal-setting is completely customizable. Again, another tremendous WIN for homeschooling! Until next time friends!
This article is an extension of one of the key steps in our 10 Steps To Kickstart Your Homeschool blog. You are welcome to check it out!
