Our top 10 goals for homeschooling

"If you aim at nothing you will hit it every time."

Zig Ziglar 

I began to work on the schedule for our first home school year last week and in an effort to streamline our focus I decided to make a list of the top 10 results we hope to help our children achieve through this new adventure. We want to make sure we're launching them in a direction that parallels our parental goals and convictions for their lives, aiming at something so they'll be more likely to hit the mark.

Here they are in no particular order of importance;

#1. Strong verbal communication skills

#2. Strong sense of community involvement and responsibility

#3. The ability to learn through their own investigative powers

#4. Opportunities for liberal arts participation; music, dance, art, theater, etc

#5. Learning from living books not boring text

#6. Life skills evaluation of their knowledge retention and application

#7. Strong writing skills

#8. Discovering and investigating their inborn inclinations and curiosities

#9. Strong evaluation and decision making skills

#10. Exposure and opportunity to explore the sciences

Hopefully with these 10 core pillars in place it'll help us make solid decisions regarding curriculum content and what we commit our time to. ie I just came across a life applications math curriculum this evening that I'm considering using called Life of Fred that I feel will aid in #1 #3 #5 #6 #9 & #10. Now, we don't have a minimum # of "pillars fulfilled" requirement to be accepted into our repertoire, however it stands to reason that the more pillars we can employ in any given subject the more accurate our end game shot will become, and that.....is the whole point.