Prioritizing Home Schooling Goals

Perhaps in your home schooling you are trying to figure out how to prioritize your home schooling goals. Everything seems so urgent -- math, spelling, writing, vocabulary, history. Everything is important. How can you prioritize?

Ideally, your children would have enough time and energy to do an excellent job in everything they undertake. They would be brilliant in math, excel in reading, and write beautifully, eager to do each one after a full morning of chores and exercise.

But, the reality? No one can do it all! Neither you nor your child always has the energy needed to spend concentrated effort on all of these areas. So what do you do?

Example:

Let's take a hypothetical situation with your home schooling goals for your ten-year-old daughter who is learning her math facts and spelling words. Naturally, both subjects are very important. And the goal is, hopefully, that your daughter can do both well.

But perhaps things aren't going well today. It is obvious that, for whatever reason, your daughter won't be able to focus well on both for very long. How do you know which one should take precedence? How do you decide where to spend your time and energy?

Tips:

There are several key questions to ask when goals seem to be in conflict with each other and you seem to need to make a choice. Here are two of them:

• What is the most important thing to focus on now? Sure, everything is important, but is it important right now? For example, we may want our child to have high standardized test scores in spelling, but is that crucial right now? If your child is studying for the SAT, spelling could be very important right now. On the other hand, if your child is ten years old, perhaps - much as you'd like to have her know those spelling rules down pat - that isn't the most important skill to learn right now. So what is? Read on.

• Is either of the options a building block that other learning depends on? In other words, if she doesn't focus on one of the priorities, will other learning be hindered? In our example with a ten-year-old girl and choosing between spelling and math, ask yourself which skill or subject is needed as a foundation for her other learning?

  Most people would agree that you need to have at least a certain amount of facility with the math facts in order to have the confidence and ability to progress to higher levels of math. Spelling, on the other hand, is less of a building block for other learning. You can still learn to write persuasive essays or do other creative writing without knowing the spelling rules. This doesn't mean you want your daughter to stay a bad speller, mind you. It also doesn't mean that you won't spend concentrated time on spelling at another time. It just means that you don't want to hamper learning wherever it could happen by not developing the tools to go on learning.

  So if you don't give priority to spelling (or whatever else is your real-life example), will your daughter ever learn to spell? Here are a few more key pointers to remember:

  • Focusing on one thing now doesn't mean you will need to focus on it forever. There will be time to go back over spelling or math or whatever it is.

  • Choosing to not focus on something doesn't mean that learning will not happen in that area. There are many other avenues of natural learning. For example, with spelling, your child could be learning through reading, playing word games, or doing copywork, even though she isn't “studying” spelling. There are natural ways of learning other subjects, too. Educational games are excellent tools for such natural learning or ways to reinforce learning.

  Remember, ask these questions:

  • What is the most important thing to focus on now? and
  • Is either option an essential building block for other learning?

    and remember that…

  • Focusing on one thing now doesn't mean focusing on it forever, and
  • Not focusing on something doesn't mean no learning will take place.

  You may also find this site will be of help as you set your home schooling goals.

  MyGoals.com for help making home schooling goals.

  I have found the information I've shared here on how to prioritize home schooling goals to be a tremendous help for me as I daily deal with what our four children need. Undergirding my decision-making with prayer has also been key for me to be able to make effective decisions regarding our home schooling goals..

  I hope you, too, will find this information helpful.

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