It’s that time of year again, Back to School! A time to reflect on the previous year and renew focus on the upcoming year. We had a great deal of success with our resolutions from last year. I am happy to report that eating breakfast as a family has become routine, our clutter has remained low, screen-time is lower and outdoor time is higher! By focusing on a few manageable goals for the school year we were able to see results without a ton of effort. I have decided to make this an annual exercise for our family and am excited to share our resolutions for this school year.

New School Year Resolutions 2014-2015:

1. Keep up our Schedule System: Our summer schedule system has been enormously successful with the kids. They absolutely love it! This year the kids will be picked up by the babysitter three days a week and by a parent two days a week. This type of tag-team pick up routine could become disastrous if we can’t keep it consistent between the three of us! The schedule will be that consistent thread that transcends day and adult. I made two additional cards to add to our line-up one for school and one for homework.
2. Reducing MY Screen Time: My husband and I do not watch TV when the kids are awake, unless it is football season :). When we reduced the kids’ screen time I became aware of my phone use around them. I am committing to staying off my phone evenings before they go to bed and during most awake times on the weekend.
3. Focusing on the Wonder and Joy of Learning: My oldest will be in the 1st grade this school year. I am very excited for her to join a new community and challenge herself academically. I am not so excited about her venturing into a more “serious” academic world and ever closer to state standardized tests. It is not that I don’t agree with serious academics or testing. (I have much more of a complicated relationship with them, more on that in a later post). It is more that I know too much. Working in education and diving into student data regularly switches my brain into analysis and intervention mode too quickly. I go from looking at a score sheet to asking, “how can we improve this score?” I DO NOT want to do that to my own children. I have to make a conscious effort to not analyze score sheets and report cards. I plan to just look at the materials to make sure that there is not cause for concern or alarm and then quickly shred them. Yep, shred them. That’s how little I trust myself. One of the main reasons we chose Montessori is that joy and curiosity is encouraged in the classroom. I do not want to kill that vibe at home. I want to be aware of the questions I might ask my oldest about school. Instead of, “Which work(s) did you do today?” I will try, “Teach me something fun/exciting/interesting that you learned or discovered today.” I know this will actually be a challenge for me. I look forward to learning better ways to encourage wonder and joy of learning.

I am excited to put these resolutions into action. Have a great school year everybody!  Leave a Comment: What are your New School Year Resolutions?