Morning Time

     For as long as I can remember, I save the best until last. Eat my veggies before meat, clean the toilet before the mirror, don't read my book until all the work is done.........basically I rarely, if ever get to the fun stuff. Sadly, this was happening with school too and things like Art, singing, and reading books just for fun were slipping through the cracks. Since I love making lists and having routines, a few month ago I slowly started to incorporate more things into our daily schedule, at mealtime and bedtime. And then one day on Pinterest I ran across something called morning time, also known as morning basket or circle time, or whatever you choose to call it.

     This was exactly what I had been looking for! Excitedly I began to search and read many wonderful blogs about families who have been doing this and I dreamed and brainstormed until I came up with a plan for us. In short, it's a time that we set aside to focus on what's really important to us that our children learn. Things like Bible memory, Hymn history, and prayer are high on our list but I was having a hard time getting it in. By making a "package deal" involving a lot of different activities, the children got more into it and now hate when we skip it! Pam Barnhill, author of Your Morning Basket says this:

“Morning Time is very much like a big group hug at the beginning of our school day. It sets the tone and atmosphere for learning. It gives us something to contemplate and mentally gnaw on for the rest of the day. And most importantly, it puts us in a right relationship with each other and with God.” ~Pam Barnhill

    Some of things we're including in our morning time for now include:

-Singing

-Bible memory

-Prayer

-Memory work

-Word of the day

-Poetry

-History

-Music

-Geography

-Nature study

-Art

*We do these daily, the rest simply rotate weekly.

Daily activities

-Singing

     Right now we sing the Doxology first thing. This is such a beautiful call to worship! We also have a Hymn of the week (or month, depending how familiar it is) that we sing daily. All four children also get to pick one song to sing and they have to lead us, including the motions. This is a favorite for them!

-Bible memory

     This is going MUCH better then I anticipated. I've simply been reading our passage for the month once a day and I'm blown away by how fast they can memorize! In December we did 1 Corinthians 13 and right now we're doing Genesis 1:1-19. I've been amazed what comes up when you go to Youtube and enter KJV song of 1 Corinthians 13. Or any other passage. If I remember I like to play this during breakfast. We do not require them to say it alone since they are so young. Maybe eventually but I have one child that can rattle it off just fine if we say it together but alone.........well, let's just say there is a sobbing pile on the floor within seconds :). Memorizing is not easy for everyone!

-Prayer

     This goes over into Geography as well since we are using a list from Open Doors and they pray for a different county each day. We don't have a globe or room to hang a world map so imagine my delight when I discovered this in the back of Dictionary! There is also a section with flags of the world so each day we look at the flag, locate the country on the map, and each take a turn praying. This has been such a blessing for me too, just realizing once again how blessed we are in America! It's good for our children too, and I love the compassion they are developing as they hear the horror Christians in other countries are going through.

-Memory Work

     Since our children are so young I'm focusing on chanting some of the basics like ABC's, counting by 2's,5's, 10's, and 25's, as well as days of the weeks and months of the year.  We only do 1 or 2 a day so it's not an overload :). 

-Word of the Day

     This was Makayla's idea. Since we have our awesome $2 thrift store Dictionary out every morning for the maps, we also choose a word for the day. I started at the beginning and just pick one word from every page. So far we've done things like abdomen, abode, accordion, and absurd to name a few. For accordion we looked up a Youtube video. They especially like if it's a word they can use often, like absurd!

I paid big bucks for a Dictionary from Usborne only to realize it's only select words. With no pronunciation. This baby not only has ALL the words, pronunciation, part of speech, and great definitions, but also lots of great reference material. Presidents, flags, maps, idioms, abbreviations...........all for $2. Yes, please!

Weekly activities

Monday

     Monday is Music day and I admit, this is my biggest drudgery. I don't really enjoy music. Or singing. Or even concerts and choruses. But I'm trying to change that, for the sake of my children. We always look up the history of a song and read a little about who wrote it. Then we just sing until they lose interest. Often I'll have a playlist ready of some fun, catchy tunes to get us going and we go from there.

Tuesday

     History is our focus on Tuesday. I found this fabulous calendar over at The Teacher's Corner that not only has birthdays but other fun days too. Like pie day. And wear red day. I am using the birthdays and historical events as a base for finding the books we read. It's definitely nothing formal and usually just a story book about Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Edison but we are all learning together!

Wednesday

     Geography and Nature! This is a fun one for me. Sometimes we just look at a map and find places we've been and places we want to go. Most times we'll read a book or 5 and find the location on the map too. I do try to keep it a little organized and grab books about animals that all live in Africa or Antarctica. I've had a lot of fun sitting down and looking up books on the library's online catalog and making a list of numbers so I can find them easily. 

Thursday

     Thursday is Art day and most likely the children's favorite. I try to find a craft or project pertaining to the season or holiday that is near. One week in January we did a Martin Luther project. This week we'll be making butter in memory of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I don't plan to much else for this day because by the time we're done it takes a while to clean up glue and paper scraps :). 

Martin Luther King. How will you change your world?

Groundhogs for Groundhog Day!

Friday

     I'm not sure what to think of this yet because I'm not big into Poetry but I want my children to appreciate the finer things in life so........Ideally, we have hot drinks and a yummy snack mid-morning while I read poetry. Realistically, it's a circus to get everyone's hot drinks fixed with just the right amount of marshmallows and sugar and milk AND having a yummy snack in the house is even more of a joke. But we try! And much to my shock, the children LOVE it. I picked up a book of traditional and silly poems at the thrift store for $0.25 and am slowly reading through it. It's really fun :) .

     Lest you think I'm all organized and get this done every day-I'll just tell you, I don't. Well, I spend a long time organizing and making lists because that's one of my happy place but making it happen is another story altogether. #1 problem is the adorable toddler in our house.

He's not pushing buttons, Peppa Pig is!

Sitting still is a trial for him, as is simply not getting into something he shouldn't, like the red pens, crayons, or toilet paper. Another favorite is turning the kitchen sink on and playing it. While standing on the very tippy trash can. Did I mention, any water that goes down our drain has to be hauled 1 mile in our 25 gallon honey wagon? Despite that, I'm trying to use this opportunity to lengthen his attention span and it's helping. A little stack of books or a snack at least kinda keeps him out of trouble. But some days he ends up quietly watching E-I-E-I-O on my phone.

     The next problem is a good one, and that is that Eldon is actually home 3 days a week. On those days we tend to hurry scurry through breakfast so we can go biking, hiking, or exploring. 

     All legit excuses but the point here is I'm trying. It's far from perfect but when it happens it's fun and wonderful. The more we do it, the more of a habit it becomes. Also, my children don't sit neatly like little angels. Michael is usually laying on the floor 50% of the time and Emily is liable to have some toys and be playing. But that's ok. It's simply amazing what children pick up when you think they aren't paying attention. 

     Morning time aside, another tool we've been utilizing is our Kindle Fire. Each child has a profile and I have educational games for each of them. Well, mostly educational. They don't get it nearly every day but it's fantastic when I need to be helping one child and another can go do math flashcards or Spelling City. It's also a great rewarding system. "If you take a nap you can have 15 minutes of Kindle time." "After your Math is done, it will be your turn." Ok, so maybe it's flat-out bribery but I'm ok with that. 

     I also feel like I need to say that we all still have perfectly healthy imaginations even though we play computer games and watch a [lot] of shows like Wild Kratt's and Andy Griffith. It may not be 100% the best thing ever but they (and I) have learned so much. I know I'm defending myself but also saying this for the other moms out there that use screen time as a tool in learning. It's easy to let myself feel like a bad mom because my children get more then 30 minutes of screen time a week but at least they aren't watching cartoons for 6 hours a day!

     Whether God has asked you to home school or to send your children to school, I highly encourage you to spend as much time learning with them as possible. We LOVE getting outside and watching birds and mammals. Library trips are the best ever and Eldon and I are s.l.o.w.l.y. getting better at not being in a hurry all the time!

     So, that's what I have to say about Morning Time! I've also written about the basic learning we use in another post that you can read about here.