What's Next

I love devising forms. So much so that I am having trouble going on to the next stage of planning. This would be the process of planning/writing out resources, where the ideas matter more than the structure ;-).

What I'm trying to do now is walk through the first "week" or so in my imagination, trying to get a big picture of what habits to establish and method to follow. Sounds vague, I guess! I'll try to be more specific, later on. But I got the idea from Katie of being very detailed in the plans for my first week or so -- listing chores, EVERYTHING I can think of -- and keeping it on a clipboard so that I can:

(1) remember what I'd planned and
(2) see for myself what's unrealistic, what will be harder than I expected and therefore will take time, and
(3) memorize the routine (very difficult for me -- I have a very slow physical memory -- I can mentally memorize FAST but "walk-through" muscle memory is very weak in me, which is why I was never good at sports or cooking or anything where you have to master a physical process and think actively while doing it)

Anyway, thinking about this has already helped somewhat, even though it is so vague. For instance, knowing that I want to focus on reading aloud to the little ones and the "outdoors" life, I am already almost unconsciously finding ways to fit these things more intentionally into our present-day-life. Intentional and unconscious sound like opposites but they aren't quite, at least for me.

For now, I am listing things that I want to make sure I include. I am going to start a binder just for that. I may even do the Avilian Method thing where I physically put every worksheet, assignment idea and resource sheet IN the binder in sequential order. (I am not using many worksheets this year, but I can at least put a blank piece of paper with the proposed assignment on top).

I can't imagine having to do this every week for all year and I don't think it would be necessary but I think it may be very helpful indeed in getting started on good habits (for myself and indirectly for the kids).

Still wondering what I'm talking about? (especially since Andrea Chen's great Avilian pages aren't always available for viewing on the geocities site?) I'll try to write out what I come up with.