FreshlyPlanted

Simple Homeschool

How are your monthly goals going? Have you decided on a word for the year, yet? My year of Courage continues! One of the biggest personal challenges for me so far has been making time to reflect and goal plan. It's so easy for me to get on autopilot, then be surprised that I've not accomplished anything beyond housecleaning and homeschooling. Which are important things, don't get me wrong, but they're not always soul-feeding (especially when laundry's involved).

So I've been making goals to help my personal growth, so I can continue the important work of growing the littles around me. I'm also writing my goals in pencil- which is very irritating to my inner perfectionist. My inner perfectionist would make unnecessary sacrifices (like never, ever sleeping) to get the whole list checked off and filed away. I'm learning, however, that everything will never get accomplished in my world. It just won't. And if it does, it will be quickly be replaced by a new list of everything. It's the nature of my life right now. So here are the goals that I'm whittling away at this month, and I'd love to hear what you're whittling away at in the comments as well. If you dream & create via blog, as so many of us do, than we'd love for you to link up your post at the very bottom. Happy April!

Goals for this month:

Finish Chapter 5 in the Burgess Book for Children: Can we just laugh together that I thought we'd finish the book this school year? I somehow didn't realize there were 45 chapters (wink).

Begin nature journaling for Treehouse School this month: New nature sketchbooks arrived in Isia & Billy's Easter baskets, and I'm so excited to get started!

Complete ONE sewing project: Ideally, this will include a project or two out of my mending basket- which is overflowing at the moment.

Basement Construction Underway: We're starting work on the basement soon, after our septic flood at the end of February. I'm keeping my goals light so there's room for basement-related tasks as they come up. We're contracting most of the work (thanks to insurance), but there are still things we'll need to do such as down-sizing everything that was in storage and painting.

2016 Completed Goals:

Read 1.75 books in March: "The Storied Life of A.J Fikry" & 2/3 of "Legend"
Master Packing Lists for Adults & Kids
Master Shopping List & Monthly Meal Plan
Using my new method to edit & file away all of our 500+ Photos from 2014
Working tags at the top of Freshly Planted homepage
Posting more than once a week!
Completed Christmas Memory Book for 2015
Completed Christmas Skirt Embroidery of Kid Hands for 2015
Completed Esther's Baby Book

Don't forget to check out the Monthly Goal linky party below, for more great goals and ideas.

If you have a blog post to link up with your own goals, we'd love to have you!

*Find more Creative Ideas on our Facebook page & Pinterest boards.

Thank you for visiting!

An InLinkz Link-up

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Simple Homeschool

Crafting Bird Banners with Kids

By freshlyplanted - 2:45 PM

Creating bird banners with kids is a fun way to learn about birds, and decorate for Spring.

One of the most important parts of creating art with kids, I think, is displaying that art. It's a skill I'm still perfecting in our house, trying to move artworks off the frig and onto our walls. I'm slow to commit to new frames- and new nail holes- so this bird banner project has been perfect. It's a great way to display drawings and is light enough to be hung with washi tape (no new holes!). It's also portable, with a myriad of uses: an outside bird tea party, a bird-themed birthday party, or a house decoration that can easily be moved from room to room.

The inspiration for this project was Isia. She's been drawing birds for over a year now (this photo was taken last spring), and is still smitten with all the different shapes & colors. She gets it honest- both Cory & I grew up poring over bird books trying to identify new birds.

Her first step for the banner was drawing her birds. She used our bird book as a reference- choosing a few we've read about in the Burgess Bird Book, as well as others she liked. She drew the birds in pencil first on nice drawing paper, then colored them in with Prismacolors. They turned out lovely!

To make the pennant pieces uniform- and as large as possible- we marked a dot in the middle of each cardstock's bottom edge, then used a ruler to trace a line from each upper corner to that dot. We then trimmed away the extra from the pennants, as well as the bird drawings, before gluing the drawings on. Once dry, I hot-glued the pennant pieces to the back of a ribbon- leaving extra ribbon at both sides for easy hanging. It was a party decoration at first, using push-pins to secure it in the gorgeous ceiling beam at my parent's house...

... before coming home to hang in the kids' room. It's such a nice pop of color to their wall, and the first thing Isia points out if she takes you up to her room- "Do you see what I made?" Yes, there are definitely more kid art displays in our future (smile).

“Consider, too, what an unequalled mental training the child-naturalist is getting for any study or calling under the sun––the powers of attention, of discrimination, of patient pursuit, growing with his growth, what will they not fit him for? Besides, life is so interesting to him, that he has no time for the faults of temper which generally have their source in ennui (boredom); there is no reason why he should be peevish or sulky or obstinate when he is always kept well amused.” -Charlotte Mason

I'm teaming up with Erin from The Usual Mayhem for fun activities to accompany "The Burgess Bird Book for Children." Here are other fun bird posts you won't want to miss: