Discover - My One Little Word

Happy New Year!  Instead of making New Year's Resolutions I've chosen the past few years to pick one little word.  An idea and I would say now a movement created by Ali Edwards.  An inspiring scrapbooker but really her niche in life is recording and capturing stories, everyday stories that are normal but beautiful snippets of our lives. 

Discover.  I began thinking about choosing a new word and nothing seemed to fit but when I thought about discover I thought it encompassed all aspects of my life and got very excited.  Life is busy being a mother, a teacher, a wife and myself.  All four parts of my life need discovering and often rediscovering.  I think discover is a word of excitement.  I think discover is in everyday things.  I think discover is uncovering and understanding.  I think discover is right in front of me for many reasons.

I know discovering and spending time on things outside of education will make me a better person and teacher.  It's a bit like balance but I was afraid to chose balance and worry about making things equal.  Here is some of my discovering thinking for 2011.

-Discover and make exercise a regular routine, using my Y membership and yes, I'm putting it in writing, running a 5K in 2011. 

-Discover the joy in scrapbooking, knitting, and sewing on a more regular basis.  I do enjoy creating. 

-Discover things with photography again.  I realized I didn't upload nor share any family photos in 2010.  This makes me a bit sad, it's a great way to connect and share our lives with family and friends.  I also have a project I got two years ago and never completed. from Becky Higgins.  It's a way to capture life daily and organize it in my 365 album.  I want to discover our daily lives and record it.  (She now has her own company and her product is called Project Life.) 

-Gardening and healthy living are also areas I want to continue discovering or think more about.

  

-Discover technology in many areas of my life. 

-Discover the many facets of my three girls even more and embrace the journey of parenting.  I want to help them discover what they enjoy doing and do with them.

Professionally, I want to discover the joy in what I'm doing each day.  Finding peace with teaching two groups of kindergarten students every other day.  I want to remember how to discover curriculum and watching them explore their world.  I want to discover or should I say rediscover the best ways to help emergent learners succeed daily.  I want to discover ways to show the important learning and growth students make without summative assessments.  I want to discover and continue blogging, sharing, and learning from others.  I want to continue to explore my own writing voice and publishing thinking. 

Of course, I want to continue discovering books.  I want to stretch this to reading things not for school or education a bit more but more my own adult enjoyment or learning beyond the classroom.

I think I'm off to a great start.  Already this morning I discovered you can tweet from your Kindle reading. I loved using the word discover in my tweet! Last year was probably the worst job I've done keeping my One Little Word in my thoughts.  So, this year I'm taking an online course with monthly guidance from Ali Edwards to write and reflect on my word discover.  May you have a blessed start to your new year and thank you for being part of my journey.