New Year's Resolution Update

I thought it would be fun to document my progress on my New Year's Resolutions. One of my resolutions was to declutter my house with the help of the book It's All Too Much. I decided to concentrate on four rooms first: kitchen, dinining room, living room and tv room. My husband sat down with me and we made a plan for each room, per the book's instructions. We decided what we wanted each room to be used for and what was standing in the way of our vision for those rooms. One big shift we made in our thinking was to realize that our living room is not a formal room even though our nice furniture is in there. It is the room we spend the most time in as a family and where the kids spend most of their time playing. We decided to buy a storage unit for that room for some of the kid's toys, books and games, as well as our books and magazines.

Now the coffee table is kept clear and ready for games or puzzles instead of being stacked with books and magazines.

By rearranging the furniture slightly we were also able to open up an area in our bay window which our son now calls the play corner.

We also emptied our china hutch of all the knick knacks and junk that was being stored in there and got rid of most of it. The hutch is now a place for all the kid's art and craft supplies, rather having them crammed into a big plastic tub.

The living room has had the most dramatic changes, but there have been small changes in the other rooms too. I feel like I've made a lot of good changes, but that I need to get re-energized and start the next phase.

Another resolution of mine was to decide what to get my master's degree in. One possibility of course is get a master's degree in education with an emphasis on some area that would make me more marketable (the area I live in is a very difficult place to get hired as a teacher). Recently I went to a meeting on Montessori teaching at the elementary level. The woman doing the presentation is a Montessori teacher in a magnet program within the public schools. She is trying to recruit more teachers to get their Montessori training so that they can expand the program. What I found so interesting about this program is that they do not change their curriculum with the latest trends in education, yet their students pass the state tests at over a 90% rate, compared with an average of 50% for the rest of the district (probably why the district wants to expand the program). Besides using the same tried and true curriculum, in a Montessori classroom the teacher plans for each child on an individual basis depending on their abilities and interests. In addition all the lessons are given in small groups--whole group instruction is rarely used. Learning about Montessori has gotten me excited about teaching again and thinking that this is a path that I want to explore more.

My third resolution was to watch less TV and have my son do the same. Since the writers' strike dragged on forever, this has not been a problem for me. I started giving my son three tickets worth 30 minutes of screen time. I am surprised by how quickly he has figured out the system and how well he handles it when he is out of tickets and I have to tell him no more screen time.

I feel like I am making good progress on my goals for the year and I would like to add one more: organize my digital pictures and buy a computer program that will allow me to create slide shows with them that can be played on a DVD player.