I know that picture you have in your head.
Everyone's up. The beds are made. The breakfast dishes are already rinsed and in the dishwasher. The children are excited to start their homeschool day and you just topped off your coffee. It's Morning Time! The gleeful giggles warm your heart as you dive into a perfect homeschool day.
Uh-huh.
We don't generally have days that start like that. Honestly, I'm not a morning person. At all. My darling boys are well aware that mommy can't talk coherently until after a (large) cup of coffee. Thank you, Keurig, for always being there for me. I digress.
BUT . . . over time Miss Mason has endeared to me the quiet, restful, gentle art of learning. And while we still have kerfuffles some days, altogether morning time has centered and grounded our homeschool in ways that allow us to weave the foundation of our day well.
Here is a glimpse into our homeschool morning schedule.
2024 update:
We are now using Awaken to Delight as our morning time and have for several years. We'd love for you to join us! I am also very much an early morning person now ;)
A Call to Morning Time Learning
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To begin our morning basket homeschool rituals, I light my favorite beeswax candle and I sit down to my coffee and Write the Word journal. That way it smells cozy and calm by the time we are ready to begin morning time and I am refreshed in spirit to begin.
I give the boys notice to put away their LEGOs and turn on our morning song for the term. We are using Mozart's Sonata 17 in C currently and it's such a peppy and fun call to start the day! When the song ends, they know to be at the table. They get to take turns ringing our crystal butterfly bell to call us to order. It belonged to my Mamaw, and using it makes me feel like she's a part of our homeschool.
*You don't need a long song, but I have a child who has to work up to transitions and the longer length helps him work up to the change in activities.*
This sweet, gentle call to attention took about two weeks to really solidify into the boys quieting down and recognizing that it meant we were now in learning time. It was worth the effort. They look forward to our homeschool morning time ritual.
Morning Time Scriptures and Hymns
We begin our morning time homeschool with an opening prayer. We use the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. This year we are memorizing the Disturb Us, Lord prayer of Sir Francis Drake. The Prayers for Children book has several sweet short prayers to help your younger children cultivate their hearts with beautiful words so they can form their own prayers later.
We follow our prayers with either a hymn or a folksong. For our hymns, we use Then Sings My Soul. It has the history of the hymn and the sheet music. We only learn the first line if it is a multiple-verse hymn. We recently learned the Doxology and hearing tiny hearts sing praises is absolutely the best way to begin the day! For folk songs, Ambleside Online has a great list compiled.
We loop our morning basket schedule for these. Our quarters are 9 weeks long. For each week we learn a new song. The same songs are done in Quarter 1 as in Quarter 3, and Quarter 2 as in Quarter 4. At the end of our year the boys have learned 18 new songs.
We utilize recitation and narration. Awana verses are often our recitation materials. We use poetry, other scripture passages, and quotes to work on reciting well. We practice good speaking posture, breathing correctly, and speaking clearly.
For our narration readings we use The Story Bible or short story/chapter books like The Burgess Animal Book (this one is also good for nature study) and Little Sir Galahad, a book from the Lamplighter collection of rare books which are inspiring stories full of food for the moral imagination.
Music and Art Study for Morning Time
We do either music or art each day in our morning time.Â
We also incorporate whatever composer we are studying into our daily life throughout the week or weeks we study them. The music plays as background for meal time, or playtime, or even in the car. We sometimes draw what we are hearing or narrate how the music sounded and how it made us feel.
It doesn't need to be complex! Good music is full of truth, beauty, and goodness. The mathematical beauty that Charlotte Mason loved so much is exemplified through music like no other medium. Allow your children to discover, to consider, and to determine what they like or don't about the music.
Our current art project is a really fun video course from the Masterpiece Society!
Artist study is another component of our homeschool morning work. We study a single artist and multiple pieces by that artist over the course of each term. We read a short bio of the artist and look at that week's piece for visual study. We use online images, postcards, and Vincent's Starry Night is also a lovely reference for art pieces and artist biographies.
History and Geography in Morning Time
These subjects sometimes trickle into our morning time schedule by way of literature or questions. History often ends up becoming a topic of conversation through an interesting tidbit of a book or a question about when something was written and why.
We are working on learning more geography this year so map tracing is included 1-2 days a week. I print out a map, laminate it, and the boys either trace it on tracing paper with a sharpie or directly with a dry-erase marker. We are working on continents and countries this year.
Poetry
Poetry is such a beautiful gift. Teaching children the art of wordsmithing through classic poems is a delight. A Child's Book of poems and Animals, Animals are our first selections for this year. Later in the year we will tackle another Shakespeare piece!
To close our morning time, we blow out our candle and then take a quick 5-10 minute leg stretching break before moving to the rest of our day. This entire process takes just under an hour and look at how much gets done!
If you are feeling lost or overwhelmed or would like a guide through morning time, Awaken to Delight is a wonderful resource and it's already done for you and ready to use!
Are you including morning time in your homeschool this year?