As we ring in the new year, there is consistent chatter about goals and ways to improve various areas in our life. Here we have broken down a few ways you can have these conversations with your tiny peers either at school or at home to bring them into the excitement and fulfillment of goal setting.
A Goose, one of our core values is providing agency for our tiny peers. This leads directly into the idea that children are competent and capable, and able to guide their own learning and direction. When speaking about goals, this is no different, here you can find three steps we have designed to ensure you are honoring your child’s light and supporting them in a way that keeps their magic.
1. Have a conversation with your child about their goals
This may sound daunting, however, can be a simple and exciting con versatile. You can start by asking your child things like “What is something you are excited to learn?” Or "What is something that you loving working on and feeling focused?” Or even “Is there something you don’t love doing right now that you want to love doing later?” These types of questions remove the pressure of attaining a goal and allow the child to choose what they feel matters to them.
2. Make it attainable and clear
Once you have selected your goal or area of growth work with your child, narrow down what exactly it might look like to achieve it. For example, if your child notes they want to learn more about dinosaurs you can then break down the ways in which you can offer more tools and information. It might be grabbing some new books about dinosaurs or searching for a local museum with the dinosaur exhibit. Once these stragedies are offered to the child, have them decide a metric in which they’d like to use to track it. This could look like I’m going to read five pages of this book a week to learn more about this dinosaur. Or I want to go to one museum every other month to grow my knowledge! Or something as simple as I want to make my favorite dinosaur of the week every Thursday, we can call it Dino Day!
3. Make it visual
This is the fun part! Work with your child to create some space, in which this goal work lives! If your child is a mark maker, you could create a tracker or a calendar, or some sort of space they can independently mark their progress. This is a great way for your child to feel fulfilled in their efforts and have a tangible metric of their growth! By keeping this visual whimsical and child lead, you are keeping the magic of their interest and personal efforts without making goals appear to daunting or serious.
4. See how it goes and make adjustments
Like with anything, witnessed your child, moving through the motions of working towards a goal, and noticed what feels like it’s working, and what may need a redesign. This is meant to be fun, lighthearted, and exciting! Feel free to create a new visual or swap out in entire goal if necessary.
As always, let us know how it goes !!!!
Happy Goal setting!
