Just like children, I love goal charts, and making marks or putting up stars to see my progress. I like to keep my goals visual, on the wall, where I will see them every day. So the first trick I'm doing to motivate myself for this year's New Year's goals, is to make a chart to track my progress through the year. I decided that I'd have one master chart, with all eleven of my goals on them, to track all together (instead of eleven different charts on my wall). I'm using graph paper. I have each goal written, then some sort of tracking after each one. One of them requires a small graph, which I've drawn in. The others just need space for tally marks, or figures entered for each month.

Another thing you can do, for yourself or to motivate your children, is to draw a unique kind of goal chart. My daughter, for example, is working on paying off some money she owes us. I told her that when she gets it all paid off, I'll take her out for ice cream. So for her goal chart, I drew an ice cream cone. We started at the bottom, and, whenever she pays back some money, we draw a new line on the chart, mark it, and she colors in the ice cream cone up to that amount. Once the whole picture is colored in, she's done.

Once, when trying to lose weight, I drew a picture of a woman's figure. Every time I lost a pound, I colored in the chart with purple. When I reached my goal, I had colored in a purple tube dress on the figure of the woman.

For homeschool, I did a very elaborate goal chart for each child. I found out what kind of scene or picture they would like. My eldest wanted a picture of a secret garden. So I drew one, complete with a low stone wall, rose bushes and flowers, a tree, a hammock, clouds and birds, etc. On the picture I wrote in her homeschool goals for the year. For example, on the clouds and bushes I wrote the names of the books she was to read. Each stone on the stone wall represented one math lesson. Each apple on the apple tree represented one Spanish lesson, etc. So every day, as she got her lessons done, or whenever she finished reading one of her books, she got to color in a part of the picture. By the end of the year she had a beautiful poster showing all she had accomplished for the year.

And if you can't draw, don't worry. Just take a picture from a coloring book, or a coloring picture from the internet, and use it to write in your goals or draw a chart over it. Or, your kids can draw their own charts. And anyone can make up a regular graph on graph paper. To decorate it, add pretty stickers or doodles around the edges.