Morning Time for homeschooling. It may have many different names and methods but the practice is a beautiful and enriching one for our homes. Cindy Rollins has been faithfully encouraging others about “Morning Time” for many years. Others, like Pam Barnhill and Sarah Mackenzie, have even written books on the subject. Recently you’ll see on Instagram an idea of “Poetry Teatime” which comes from the same idea of gathering the family together for literature and the arts.
However you choose to approach a gathering time in your homeschool, it is a proven way to ensure you don’t miss much of the beautifully enriching aspects of homeschooling in the business of completing tasks. Whether you have little children, older teens, or a mix of every age, homeschooling makes for a busy house. Morning Time is simply the practice of having a regular gathering time to read a selection of books, look at some paintings, sing some hymns, and maybe recite poetry and scripture. This will breathe life into your homeschool, adding to a peaceful atmosphere and feelings of connectedness.
Education is a Life
“Education is a life. That life is sustained on ideas. Ideas are of spiritual origin, and God has made us so that we get them chiefly as we convey them to one another, whether by word of mouth, written page, Scripture word, musical symphony; but we must sustain a child’s inner life with ideas as we sustain his body with food.”
Charlotte Mason (vol. 6 pg 136)
Ideas are the food for the soul as Charlotte Mason said. Morning Time is a dedicated moment to present truth, goodness, and beauty to your children through inspiring stories, hymns of faith, culture through folk songs and stories, and whatever it is that matters most to your family. This is a way to continually maintain your vision for educating your children. You don’t want to miss these beautiful aspects of homeschooling in the business of life; they are not ”’extras” but they are probably the reason you wanted to homeschool in the first place. I hope to encourage you in how to implement this practice in a very simple way and inspire you to tailor it specially for your family.
“We spread an abundant and delicate feast in the programmes and each small guest assimilates what he can.”
Charlotte Mason (vol. 6 pg 184)
How to avoid burn-out.
There are many resources available online with the title, “Morning Time” and are certainly beautiful and fun to look at. Still, I would love to make the case to you that it is possible to have a Morning Meeting, (Circle Time, Morning Basket, Morning Menu, etc.) without a curriculum or specially designed material. For my homeschool planning, I like to balance simplicity with adding beautiful materials. It is so easy to fall into the urge to overschedule the days so I try to be selective with what I add to our core curriculum. Add a little here and a little there and soon you will realize it is too much material to get through every day.
“As the object of every writer is to explain himself in his own book the child and the author must be trusted together, without the intervention of the middle-man. What his author does not tell him he must go without knowing for the present. No explanation will really help him, and explanations of words and phrases spoil the text and should not be attempted unless children ask, What does so and so mean?”
Charlotte Mason (vol. 6 pg 192)
Although we can choose to go into depth about certain subjects, I think we should be careful about adding extraneous information to the feast we are presenting. As this truth Mason shares about over-explaining goes well for literature, it also must be true for approaching the arts. We should be careful not to talk so much or to try to provide every fact or piece of information about everything we are presenting.
Do we need a detailed life story of an artist, or can we just focus on appreciating the beauty of a painting and training the eye to look for details? Do we need to know mistakes and intimate details of a composer’s life, or can we appreciate the music’s dynamics and creative expression while we learn to value the classical genre? Yes, there is space for a delightful living book biography of a composer or an artist, or a comment here and there, but this is not imperative for music and art appreciation, nor is it necessary for each hymn or folk song we study. Instead, we can provide a short background of the artist’s life and then show the picture or play the music. Let us simply place the feast before them.
But there must be knowledge and, in the first place, not the technical knowledge of how to produce, but some reverent knowledge of what has been produced; that is, children should learn pictures, line by line, group by group, by reading, not books, but pictures themselves… After a short story of the artist’s life and a few sympathetic words about his trees or his skies, his river-paths or his figures, the little pictures are studied one at a time; that is, children learn, not merely to see a picture but to look at it, taking in every detail. Then the picture is turned over and the children tell what they have seen…
Charlotte Mason (vol. 6 pg 215)
Take a pause and decide on the best of each option before adding more than truly needed, you can thank yourself in February when the fires of gathering new material have dwindled. It is better to plan less and plan well than to fall off the routine of a Morning Time entirely because it is difficult to finish or overwhelming. “Leave it out or you’ll burn out,” how’s that for a new motivational phrase? Remember that you can always add more later. (This probably won’t happen, but it’s good to have things to say to ourselves. )
Creating an inspiring plan for your family’s morning time.
Start with writing down in a few sentences about what you want to accomplish in your homeschool, also known as a Homeschool Mission Statement. Chances are this will not include things like, “learning how to check the weather” or, “complete math before noon” or, “knowing the names of classical composers.” I think for us and our children to feel freshly inspired every day, we should be presenting a feast of the true, good, and beautiful. Isn’t it all the sweeter to be able to savor this time as a family? This scripture comes to mind often when I think of what I want our family’s homeschool days to be like:
8 Finally, believers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable and worthy of respect, whatever is right and confirmed by God’s word, whatever is pure and wholesome, whatever is lovely and brings peace, whatever is admirable and of good repute; if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think continually on these things [center your mind on them, and implant them in your heart].
Philippians 4:8 (AMP)
What should I put in our homeschool morning basket?
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Choose one or several in a category of your choice. I’ve listed things that are better done together as a family, though you might want to separate some items for another part of the day. (If you select some of these once per week and a few others daily, you may only need to choose about four items per day. Be careful to not choose too much for each day. You can always schedule certain readings to be done at a different time, or with individual students.)
[Note: If you have multiple children spanning different age ranges, decide which of the books will work to combine with all of your children, then you can always dismiss the younger children to play while you use the more mature books or longer readings for your older students.]
❧ Bible: Story Book, Devotional, or Bible Plan. Use one daily and rotate any others. We enjoy using the dramatized KJV bible from Life Bible and their app. Hurlburt’s Story of the Bible is a wonderful book of chronological stories, I’ve never read a bible story book as well-written and enjoyable as this one.
❧ Recitation: Poetry, scripture, or speeches. Daily practice is best, but keep it short. The Simply Charlotte Mason scripture cards are wonderful! For poetry, we’ve been choosing some selections from the poems we’ve read and loved. I have previously used IEW’s program, though now I prefer to select my own selections of poems.
❧ Art Appreciation, 8-12 printed or digital copies of paintings of one artist per 12-week term. Once a week. I’ve made a video on Instagram for ideas on making your art prints. Ambleside Online lists suggested some prints. Art books are another option for picture study. There are many available with big gorgeous photos, the challenge is finding some without a lot of Freudian commentary, but there are some good ones out there.
❧ Music Appreciation, 8-12 pieces from one composer per term. Once a week, but listen casually throughout the week. Ambleside Online has some great selections and links to listen to the pieces.
❧ Poetry, one poet per term (or choose an anthology if your student is already studying one poet’s work.) Read one daily.
❧ Hymns, one per month to learn 2-3 times a week. Ambleside Online has many hymn resources and lists. In addition, look at Hymnary.org. I also enjoy using the books Then Sings My Soul.
❧ Folksongs, one per month to learn once a week. (Look at Archipelago, Ambleside Online’s blog for more about folk songs.)
❧ You can choose to read or listen to Shakespeare together at this time, once or twice a week. My girls enjoy listening at longer length so we do this at a different time. We love using the dramatized audiobooks by Arkangel Productions while reading along, it helps us understand what is going on and it makes it enjoyable.
❧ Short stories, poems, or picture books of a second language your family is studying. Use one daily.
❧Short Nature Study readings. I like to read these together once a week, we love this version of the Anna Comstock book with color photos published by Living Book Press. They are printed as a series of books.
❧ Plutarch. If you are reading Plutarch with multiple students, Morning Time can be a good way to combine this. (We have preferred this translation by Dryden.) See Ambleside online for free guides.
❧ Other ideas to sprinkle in; living book biographies of composers or artists, fairy tales, or literature. I find that longer readings make morning time a little too long so I prefer to do those in the later morning or afternoons. You may want a longer morning time depending on the season of life in your home and fairy tales or free reading literature would be a wonderful thing to add.
❧ Extras for fun: Puzzle books, math puzzles, or riddle books can be a fun way to mix things up in your morning time. We are enjoying “Moscow Puzzles” which has logic puzzles and math brain teasers.
How should I start morning time?
Even though the name suggests starting a gathering time in the morning, it might just work better for your family to have it at a different time. Some homeschool parents work from home or have other reasons to put it off until a later time. However, there is a good reason to choose the “morning” because it will go a long way in setting the tone for the day. Some families like to pray to dedicate their day or say the pledge of allegiance, while others choose to light a candle or play a special song to gather everyone. The wonderful part about homeschooling is that the atmosphere you create is entirely up to you, so do what feels most natural to you. For our family, we have had different ways of doing our together time, but during breakfast has been the best time for us. We also use dinner time to enjoy hymns and scripture memorization, which shortens our morning time to allow my husband to join in some before he starts work. Think about a typical (not ideal) day and what time makes the most sense for your family. (I shared some about this in my DITL post.)
How to make a morning time basket and how to use it.
A box, a shelf, or just a stack of books is fine too. After you’ve selected your items from the list above, you can use a paper to write the number of days per week you want to do Morning Time and list several books under each category. Then you can check off each day as you go. If you happen to leave off on day four of five, on Monday you can simply pick up on day five and continue in a loop. That’s really it! No need to write individual books down in a planner each week, just keep a list and repeat each loop as you go. (Thank you, Pam Barnhill, for teaching me about loop scheduling!) Once you have your list and collection of books and resources, you’re ready to start!
Here are some of my favorite books we have used for morning time:
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