I missed posting my July Week 3 goals last week, but I certainly have not forgotten what my goals are! So far, this summer has been filled with sun, pool, beach, friends, family, sports, etc. We are enjoying ourselves immensely, and I am appreciating the small break from the routine of school work, planning, and grading. All in all it has been a successful month. I have seen significant progress in all the of my goal areas.

Goal One: Change the “tone” in our home.

We have made better progress here than I thought we would, although we are still not there yet. This week we have been spending a great deal of time talking about common courtesy/decency/consideration, etc. The fact that we talk about responding in a nice tone, considering how others are feeling, and so on, is not just about rules we are setting, but about being a caring, considerate human being. That is more where I will gear this goal for the month of August, not just on tone, but about being a caring, considerate person to everyone (even your siblings, spouse, parents).

Goal Two: If you take it out, put it away.

I am having more success myself with this in the sense that I am not picking up after everyone so often. Instead, I stop and ask the person who made the mess to come and clean it. Now we are working on not walking away from any mess without cleaning it up first. Thus, eliminating my need to tell someone to clean up their own mess, and getting rolling eyes in return!

Goal Three: Clear out from this past school year.

I managed to get 6 bins down to 3 from all our years of homeschooling by throwing out all the completed workbooks! How many finished math, spelling, language arts books do you really need to keep? NONE in my opinion so they are all gone! I am gearing our storage to larger projects, and samples of work rather than ALL of it! We have also gone completely digital with record keeping so that I no longer have to keep the huge planner each year! Instead we scan it to pdf form and save it on the computer (with multiple backups both onsite and off, of course).

I was thrown a little curve ball this past week by being blessed with a TON of craft supplies from my sister-in-laws sewing room. It is fantastic to have all the supplies, but it forced me to really tear apart the homeschool room and reorganize so that I will have room for all of it. Chloe and I spent hours on Monday emptying bins and cupboards, sorting and reorganizing. We are still not done, but are getting closer!

Amidst all of the cleaning and organizing from last year, I have managed to make a small start on what will be one of my goals for August. I am going to try out a planning system that means planning for the whole 36 weeks ahead of time by using a filing system. I think it will help minimize my stress during the year if I can pull off getting it all ready in the coming month! Thus, my primary goal for August (next to creating caring, considerate human beings) will be to plan for the quickly approaching school year of 2011-2012. Normally I am completely done with this, instead I have barely begun!