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Every new year people make up New Year’s Resolutions. I used to set them every year and each time within two to six months would end up failing miserably. I would try, but something would always throw things off and I couldn’t get back into the groove.
Last year I edited my husband’s book, Achieving your goals by Setting SMARTER Goals: Goal Setting For the New Year & Every Other Day, on setting achievable goals and tried applying them. This book is free on Amazon Kindle Unlimited.
I decided last year to try to implement them myself on my goals and with the exception of one, I was able to achieve all but one of them, with one not completed, but still making continuous progress. My continuous progress goal involves my youngest son. He is in a learning delayed Pre-K program. My goal was to work with his teacher and when she would say that he was struggling in a specific area, I would take that area and focus on working with him on it on Fridays (when he doesn’t have class since he’s in a four day program) and work toward proficiency in that area. This past year she mentioned shapes and colors, as a problem area for him.
Both myself and family members purchased several learning toys that focused on these areas. We already had the Learning Resources All Ready For Toddler Time Activity Set that we had used for teaching him his numbers, but there were also many ways that I could use this for teaching him his colors. His favorite was the animal sorter. There were a series of colored circles on a board and colored animals. I would pull out an animal and ask him to place it on the correct color while telling him the color name. He started placing the animals on the correct colors within an hour. Getting him to say the color names back to me took a few weeks.
Next I purchased a shape sorter and started working on both name and color recognition while learning which opening to place the shapes into. The toy itself he mastered in less than an hour so we worked with me requesting verbally the shape I wanted and having him give it to me.
I also wanted something that he could associate the names of the colors and shapes with the actual shapes and colors themselves. I came across the perfect items – Educational Insights Shapes Bean Bags and Educational Insights Colors Bean Bags. These were great because I could use them in many ways and they had a lot more shapes and colors than what you typically see in a shape or color themed toy.
My son has made great strides with his color and shape recognition. He now almost always will respond to verbal requests, but we are still working on printed name recognition and saying the names of some of the shapes and colors.
For this year’s goals I am working on maintaining steady progress on our websites with article content and continuing to work with my youngest son on areas he is struggling in school.
Achieving goals takes time, consistency and determination. By designing specific goals with steps to complete along the way and setting up a way to measure my progress I hope to continue to meet my goals.
