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Tips & Tricks: Setting Goals

I set goals for the school year at the beginning of the year. I go through all the curriculum and see what it goes over then make goals from that. For example in our Math-U-See curriculum for 1st grade it mostly goes over addition/subtraction and solving for X. While the child can use the blocks to help them I set the goal that by the end of the year I would like our daughter to be doing the problems either entirely on her own or using her finger or blocks as little as possible. For subjects like history and science my goals are they she remembers the main ideas from the sections we read. Our youngest, is 2, is just about to start school so she will be doing preschool. In preschool I just teach the basic things. So my goals for her are that by the end of the she can do the following:

  • letters; upper and lower
  • numbers; 0-25
  • counting
  • shapes
  • colors
  • weather and what you wear for them
  • animals and their sounds
  • drawing different kinds of lines
  • kinds of vehicles
  • same, different
  • sizes
  • places
  • body parts
  • patterns
  • jobs
Anything that she has not mastered is ok. She is 2 and PreK is a more advanced preschool so we will go over everything from preschool and a bit more. It is perfectly fine if a child does not fully master a skill from the previous year. You can always stick with the same grade from subjects and move onto the next grade in others. Once your child has gotten the concepts down it is fine to move them up to the next grade in that subject even if you are already well into the year. How do you set your goals? Let us know in the comment section below.

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