Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

The second installment in our Leader in Me habit study is to Begin with the End in Mind! This habit reminds kids to first decide what they want, and then to make a plan to get there. Again, we thought about this habit through five mini-lessons (5-15 minutes each):

Day 1: Chapter 2 of Sean Covey's 7 Habits of Happy Kids compares two characters, one which spends his money without a plan and one who flutters it all away without a goal. This opened up some great conversation about the difference between people who follow the habits- and those who don't!

Day 2: Okay, so I cheated a little bit on this one and combined some habit work with conference prep- Totally okay, right?! :-) Everyone had to fill out this sheet, which is split into two parts- "in school" and "at home or with my friends." For each part, they had to tell me (and their parents!) something they were proud of and something they could improve on, as well as a rough plan of get there. They did some great thinking!

Day 3: Video time! Since they loved the Happy Kids episode so much last week, I showed another one this week - Episode 1: "Goob and the Bug Collecting Kit". It was a very similar story to the Happy Kids chapter we read- but they loved it all the same! Again, you can find this at the Leader in Me website.

Day 4: After doing so much individual goal-setting, I decided it was time to work as a group to set goals as a class. We reached a consensus on our "ends in mind" for third grade, which I recorded on chart paper to refer back to the next day. We had a pretty wide range of goals- learning, making friends, earning PBS parties, and having fun were the top of the list!

Day 5: We took our goals and worked them into a class mission statement, which is now proudly hanging on our wall! This is our "plan": how the kids decided we can reach our goals of parties, friendship, and learning! This is a great anchor chart to have out to refer back to when we're having one of those rough days.