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Well, how was school today? I try to look at January as a restart doing a similar evaluation to what I do in May/June for the coming year. Some things to consider:
1. What’s working really well? What’s not?
2. What are we enjoying? What is a big hassle?
3. How many outside activities are we involved in? Is it too many or not enough? What’s changing in our schedule?
4. Which kids are behind and needing extra help in a certain area? Which areas have we done really well that we could perhaps slack in to give more time to something needing more attention?
5. Did we do anything fun this fall? (i.e. field trips, big hands-on projects etc…) Can we make time for some of these things this semester? Something may have to give, when and what will it be?
6. Are we on schedule? If we’re ahead do we want to add anything (maybe or maybe not?) If we’re behind can we adjust it?
With January I’m also trying to ease into this first week much like the first week of school in September. We’re not adding in the extra read aloud's and many of our outside activities are still off this week so it makes it easier to get back to business. It’s not quite as difficult as after the summer off but it still helps to ease in a little.
Another area to consider is your home. How are the chores doing? Do we need to adjust any lists or assignments? How about your food? Is the freezer well stocked? Is your budget stretched right now, can you eat out of your freezer/pantry for a week or two? Take an inventory and see.
So what were our answers?
1. What’s working well?
Things overall are going pretty well, nothing stands out as extraordinary this semester, but nothing going horribly either.
2. What are we enjoying and what’s a hassle?
We continue to like our project weeks so we do have more scheduled. We love the YWAM biographies and other read alouds so we have those planned as well. I’m not sure if we’d exactly classify Latin as a hassle, we do like it when we do it, it just seems to be a hassle to find time to get it done. We’re not stressing about it, well do it when we can. Maybe we’ll do just Latin in May/June when we finish up other things, well see.
3. How many outside activities?
This area we really cut back on this year and have enjoyed more home time though some activities, especially choir, are missed by a few of the kids. For time and money reasons though, we are sticking to our original plan. We did however allow the kids each one sport so I need to get Lexie in gymnastics hopefully this winter as that was her choice for the year and also get Logan into the life guarding class if that’s possible. Those are both on my to do list for today.
4. Which kids may need some help in areas?
We are focusing on study skills and time management especially with our older two as this seems to be our greatest area of need. Our younger two had some areas they were week on but we seem to have found some things this fall that are helping and we’re getting closer to where we need to be so we’re going to stay the course with them.
5. Did we do anything fun?
We did do a field trip to the state Capitol. We’re considering a trip to Jamestown next fall so we’ll probably not plan anything big for the spring. We will do some hands-on type projects to go with their history and science fair exhibits.
6. Are we on schedule?
Yes, we are doing pretty well here except for Latin as I already mentioned. The one we did adjust is some assignments for my oldest. He was getting hopelessly behind in his computer course so we revised our timeline on that so it seems more manageable to him. It will just mean his internship or hands on computer building gets put off till summer or fall but that’s okay.
With the home things I did do a pantry/freezer inventory and found we’ve got over two weeks of dinners and at least 10 days of breakfast and lunch items without buying very much. That helped us these first two weeks of January. It just seemed like money was flying out of here in December!
We also went back to a chore system we used before which had worked pretty well for us. For a time we tried a different way to break up the chores but it just wasn’t working for us.
So I hope you’ll take an hour or two and give some thought to the rest of your year.
“Few things are brought to a successful issue by impetuous desire, but most by calm and prudent forethought.” Napoleon Bonaparte
Proverbs 16:3 Commit your works to the Lord, And your plans will be established. | 
