The Countdown Begins

Well, I officially feel in the "mood".........for Christmas, that is!!

I'm one of these crazy people who can only concentrate on one big holiday event at a time, so I have to get through Thanksgiving before I can even begin thinking about Christmas.

But, there's one more thing I had to get in place and organized before starting on my Christmas Planner Project (more to come on that - soon), which was school!

And, I wanted to share a little idea that came to me today as I was looking over the next month and deciding exactly what my expectations would be before the Christmas break.

This is just a fun, little booklet I put together for Collin, to motivate him for the next 4 weeks of school.

Within this booklet, he has all the assignments that are expected to be completed before we can officially take a break for Christmas.    He can work at his own pace; finishing early if he chooses.

WHENEVER he finishes ALL the assignments in this booklet, he is DONE!  Hence, the motivator!


Here's what I did:

#1   Looked over our December calender to determine how many school days we have left (for our     family  - yours may look different).

#2   Looked over each subject (just CORE subjects for this month) to determine where I wanted him to stop, so that when we start back after the holidays, we will be in a good starting place and not having to review, because we stopped in the middle of a unit.   

#3   Based on how many assignments it would take to get to our stopping point, I calculated how many times he would do that subject in the allotted number of days left.

#4   I made a separate check-off sheet per subject, listing the subject, how many lessons to the end, and made a list - #1, #2, #3, etc., with a place to check off each assignment as it was completed.   (see picture)

#5   I stapled them all together with a cover sheet that says "Count Down" (in Christmas colors) and on the back it says "You're Done!"

I try to use motivators like this for the holidays and as we get toward the end of the school year.   This gives the kids a smaller time-frame to reference and they feel they can see the "light at the end of the tunnel" (helps mom, too!)

So now that I have school organized and I don't have to use my brain power to figure out what we're doing every week, I can officially get into the holiday spirit!

Hope you are too!