September 2013 - Page 3 of 3 - Aimed at the Heart

Book Review: Planner Perfect

Title: Planner Perfect
Author: Jenny Penton
Publication Date: May 17, 2012
Price: $4.99
Place Acquired: Ultimate Homemaking eBook Bundle

About the author: Jenny is a homeschooling mom of 8 who, while growing up, watched her mother’s diligent use of a planner. Her mom’s use of a planner to manage her home and plan her life’s goals and dreams inspired Jenny to create a system that worked for her own life to help her manage her home and life. Jenny’s passion is “to inspire women to live with purpose and intent; switching focus from task slave to goal aficionado.”

Describe: The first few chapters of her book are not about how to create a system for yourself but rather about recognizing the need you have for a system in your life. She explains about setting up a special place for yourself to plan and dream and then goes on to explain how God put those plans and dreams in to your heart to pursue. Then comes the more technical section of the book dedicated to how to use loose leaf to capture your dreams, track your goals, and plan your projects. She gives tips on how to plan parties, vacations, how to plan the perfect Christmas, and more. The last portion of her book is dedicated to examples of how to set up the different pages to keep your life in check as well as how to use a journal and meal planner.

Analyze: As I read this book several months ago and have since set up my own home management binder, I did not expect to glean a lot of new information. The reason I chose to read this again was because of a couple of posts I read on Jenny’s blog about how she is unschooling her children. I could relate to her as a fellow unschooling mom who enjoys having a plan and a bit more structure to the home than some other unschooling blogs I have come across. After gaining some insight about Jenny’s life and family, I was able to take fresh eyes to this book. I took a page and a half of notes. That’s a lot considering the book is 48 pages long (according to my ereader) and can easily be read in one sitting (assuming you don’t have little ones interrupting, which I did so it took me a couple of evenings). It was so full of information and ideas that I think I could read it a third time and still come away learning something.

Evaluate: It’s about more than staying organized. It’s also about being refreshed and inspired every day. It is about allowing yourself to recognize and grasp those dreams that God placed in you and then setting a plan in motion to accomplish them. “Once you are a true “Planner Perfect Gal,” you will soar!” There are a lot of methods out there that will tell you what to do, but not many help you figure out why you’re doing it in the first place. Anyone who knows me likely knows how much I value a slower-paced life to help you stay on track with your priorities and Jenny’s book has some wonderful explanations of why and how to accomplish this. There are so many different books, articles, and blogs out there on the “how” and yet so few truly help you figure out your “why.” Planner Perfect encompassed the whole journey from telling you why a plan is important, to helping you figure out the direction your plan should take, to giving you the tools you need to get there.

Recommendation: While I haven’t adopted the complete Planner Perfect system, I have made use of many of the techniques and ideas in the book. I think there is something special about giving yourself permission to dream and plan and put it all on paper. Plus, since I’m rather frugal, I appreciate the fact that she encourages the use of loose leaf (especially considering I just bought several packages for 15 cents each at Walmart a few weeks ago during their “back to school” sale). Organizing tasks is easy and any old planner system can do that. If you have tried other systems and became bored or distracted, or even if you have never tried a planner/binder system at all, check out this book and give yourself a kick start by starting up your dream engine again. Once you have your motivation and mission, you’ll find that the tasks start to fall into place.

Word on Wednesday: True Wisdom is Not Found in a Classroom

by Tessa | Faith

Welcome to this week’s Word on Wednesday post!

This is a verse that I’m reflecting on this week. It is a great reminder to me at this “back-to-school” time of year that neither my children nor I will learn true wisdom by sitting in a classroom. If we are open to the Lord’s guidance and instruction, nothing will be able to take away from us the Wisdom from the Lord.

It goes hand in hand with Romans 1:20 which states that “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” My primary role as a mother is to teach my children about God and this will be understood from what He has made. So we will continue to spend our time in His world and learning about Him through the life He has blessed us with.

Household Rules for Our Unschooling Family

by Tessa | Motherhood

My interpretation of unschooling is that it is a form of learning from life without imposing a specific curriculum or forcing a specific method of teaching on my children.

A lot of information about unschooling that I have read talks about how it is just letting life teach your children the things they need to know to live and thrive in this world and culture. This method of learning has always made perfect sense to me. If you need a skill to survive in your current role or career, you find a way to aquire it. Sometimes this is done through extensive reading and research, other times through hands-on trial & error, and other times it requires us to take a course specifically set up to give us the proper qualifications and information. At the end of the day, the outcome is the same: the new skill is learned because you chose to learn it. Why should it look any different for our children?

Many radical unschoolers forgo the practice of schedules or parent-imposed learning or even restrictions on anything that many other children have limits on. While I understand how this can work really well for some families, I feel that unschooling gives my family and I the opportunity to set up our household in a way that works for us. My family runs better when we have a regular rhythm to our days. This also means that we require certain things from our children and have certain rules for them.

Here is a bit of a framework for our family:

* We require our children to participate in the family, including the family work (household as well as farm).
* We expect them to show the love of God through their actions and attitudes. We do no allow them to disrespect us or each other.
* We believe that our children must respect us as authority figures (which, in turn, means that we must prove ourselves to be an authority worth respecting).
* We teach and expect them to treat their bodies as temples of God, which includes healthy eating habits, an active lifestyle, and healthy sleep habits.
* The condition of their heart takes precedence over all else.

Those are some of the boundaries and expectations that we have in place for when our children live in our home.

The Alberta School Act even states it’s goal for students become a “self-reliant, responsible, caring and contributing member of society.” It seems that even the Alberta government believes that character is important. Many employers realize that while skills can always be taught, character cannot. In fact, out of the 46% of job failures that happen within the first 18 months, 89% was due to attitude issues, only 11% was due to lack of skill. So, in order to give my kids the best foot forward, our main focus will be to develop their character. We believe that these things are essential to our children becoming capable and well-adjusted adults. And isn’t that what unschooling, or any other educational method, is all about?