New Beginnings

Our new year begins with a renewed focus on maintaining and developing good habits. More details later on the habits and the ways we'll be working on those. Today's morning meeting detailed some of the goals for the new year with the kids. We ended up talking for a long time and the conversation eventually found its way to the reason mom hates computer games topic again.
This has been an issue for some time and there are myriad reasons, but for this short post I will say that the end result seemed to be some understanding for why mom wants to limit time on the computer and TV. The part when I really felt like I connected with Charles came when I referred to the book he's reading now, Guardians of Ga'Hool. Good book (movie isn't as good as the book), read it Sunday when I was sick and home with a sick baby. We talked about how the TV and computer/video games can "moon-blink" kids into letting their guard down and parent's jobs are to protect kids who may be defenseless like little owlets.
Today we'll start our first habit of journal writing everyday. If they do this for 14 days in a row they will earn the "Journal Badge" (essentially a cool sticker, I just have to find one) and after 21 days of working on this habit continually they will earn Dangerous Book for Boys, or Daring Book for Girls. They can also start work on their "Chef Badge" (helping with dinner prep and clean-up : they've already been doing this, but without the badge "reward") When they've done these habits for 21 days they'll earn the reward of planning and cooking a meal themselves.
These ideas stem from Charlotte Mason's teachings on habits. You can read more here. And from 2 Corinthians 5:15, as well as Ephesians 5:16.
More tomorrow about our schedule changes for the new year.