Bookish Family: morning time

Showing posts with label morning time. Show all posts

Family Subjects, 2021-2022

Even though we have been recording a number of homeschool days already (in PA we have to document 180), our official start to Term 1 of formal lessons will begin in just 1 day . . . I feel excited and mostly ready.

Despite feeling the need to simplify and reduce in many areas, we are going to continue most of the "bonus subjects" that a Charlotte Mason education has to offer including folk singing, composer study, artist study, Shakespeare, and handicrafts. They can be fairly easy to include, especially if I can be satisfied with however we manage to get them done.

Every year I feel like I am refining what the best books for our homeschool look like. I'm learning new things while unlearning or correcting some of the defects of my own history education (that officially ended in high school because I took zero history courses after that).

This year I combed through MANY possible choices for history books and additional or supplemental books for studying a very difficult and lengthy historical period. The books I was seeking needed to be

Living books, that is full of living ideas and told in a narrative style that doesn't talk down to the student
Written in a way that represents native people of the Americas, explorers, colonists, and African Americans in a way that I feel good about sharing with my children and matches our family values (aka has the ideas that I want to nourish my children)
At a reading level that my 2 older students can read (nearly) independently, even given that my middle student is not a strong reader yet.
Affordable

It feels like forever ago that I posted these homeschool plans. But finally, we have (almost) reached the end of our 180 days of schooling (as required by PA) and I can revisit our plans and show how we accomplished them, what we ditched, and what books rounded out our home learning for the year.

Our 10 Favorite Read Alouds 2020

2020 was a great year for reading. I read more books than ever. I have more kids who are reading to themselves more books now than ever. I have three "official" homeschool students this year so there were more books read this year as part of lessons. But sometimes I like to look back at the books we enjoyed together as read alouds. And I'm linking up with Rosie for her Just Because blog linkup.

Some of our favorites were read bit by bit at our morning time at breakfast and others were read chapter by chapter at lunchtime. I find that as the kids are getting older, we read less together :-( It is hard to balance togetherness with independence. But by reading at breakfast and lunch, and with bedtime reading done by Daddy, we are still completing a few dozen books per year.

Recap and Review of Kindergarten Homeschool Plans, 2019-2020

For the third time around, I got to enjoy spending meaningful time with my 5-year-old as I created a space for a quiet growing time before starting formal schooling.

Although I didn't faithfully follow all of my plans, we read a lot of new-to-her books that she loved, learned MANY new songs and poems, and also completed more crafts than I would have done without planning it out ahead of time. On to the review . . . .

Here is where I will recap and review our homeschool year. This was my third year of planning a full Charlotte Mason style curriculum with short, morning lessons on a wide variety of subjects according to a strict timetable designed to fit our family, but it was only my second year planning for 7/8-year-old John. I love to consult Ambleside Online, a Catholic Charlotte Mason curriculum, as well as Wildwood Curriculum for ideas, but I put it together in my own way. You can see my original plans here.

This was a year with a lot of growth for John. Most of what we did worked well, especially because I gave him a little more space, but there was 1 subject that I completely let go of for John this year. On to the review . . .

Here is where I will recap and review our homeschool year. This was our third year of doing a full Charlotte Mason style curriculum with short, morning lessons on a wide variety of subjects according to a strict timetable designed to fit our family. I love to consult Ambleside Online, a Catholic Charlotte Mason curriculum, as well as Wildwood Curriculum for ideas, but I put it together in my own way. You can see my original plans here.

Overall, this year went really well. I've become a better planner--meaning I'm more realistic about what I will be able to oversee with consistency. But as always, some of my plans didn't work as well as I'd hoped. Some things I changed midstream and others, maybe I should have changed. On to the review . . .

7 Things I'm Thankful for This Week

It has been a crazy few weeks with a lot of mixed feelings for everyone in the family and not a few sibling conflicts. But we are still finding a lot of things to enjoy and be thankful for amidst all the strangeness.

Here are a few of the things in our own home that I've been thankful for this week:

30+ Poems for Spring with Nature Study Links

When spring is finally in the air I cannot wait to get outside and experience nature on a regular basis again. While we do make an effort to enjoy the outdoors in every season, winter has us inside much more than any other time of the year.

Choosing great poems (and read alouds!) that evoke the pleasures, sounds, smells and wonders of the springtime woods and fields is a great way to prepare and get even more out of our springtime excursions.

I hope you and your family can enjoy some of these poems this spring. May they inspire you (as they do me) to notice the daffodils, skunk cabbage, nesting birds and other joys of the season!

Charlotte Mason Homeschooling Day with ages 9, 8, 5, and 1-year old

There are so many ways to homeschool! It is freeing (and just a tiny bit terrifying) to me that there are so many "right" ways to do this job for our unique situations. That is why I love reading homeschool day-in-the-life posts.

Every year, Simple Homeschool's linkup leaves me inspired and encouraged (and usually with a few more books on my want-to-read list). I hope you enjoy our 2020 day in our homeschooling life! Past years are here: 2019 and 2018.

20+ Best Poems for October and November

We love our morning time habit of reading the same poem every day for one week! It is how our morning time began over 5 years ago and it continues to add beautiful words and ideas to our family culture . . . . and our imaginations!

I love just picking up any poem that speaks to me and sharing it with the kids. But I also like choosing poems that especially call to mind the seasons and upcoming holidays.

Here are our favorite poems for October and November that bring to mind the joys of the season: the spookiness of Halloween, the crispness of ripe apples, the nip of frost in the air, and the colors of the changing leaves.

5 Totally Free Books We are Loving in our Homeschool Right Now

We have several totally free books in rotation in our homeschool morning time. These books are definitely living books because each one is inspiring my kids to such deep thoughts and interesting questions!

Sure, a physical book is the best way to go, but why miss out on the best books just because they are out of reach for our budget and not available locally to borrow? Here are five we are enjoying right now . . . and for a change, not all of them are "old" or in the public domain.

Kindergarten Homeschool Plans, 2019-2020

Recently, a few different people have asked me about kindergarten. Then I realized, wow, this is my 3rd time homeschooling kindergarten!!!!

I can vividly remember the odd panic I felt attending a playgroup in 2015 during the week that my son would have been starting kindergarten. A circle of mainly well-intentioned mothers starting peppering me with questions.

How will you do math?

What about socialization?

How long are you going to do this?

How are you going to teach all the subjects?

What about high school?

The questions they asked were so silly! But I remember asking similar questions of a friend who was planning to homeschool her then-preschooler. I was curious and interested to learn more about this so-called homeschooling!

Four years later and I'm only feeling more confident in our decision to homeschool and more sure of my ability to make plans that are appropriate for my children and our family.

What We're Reading: Spring 2019

Spring is in the air in Pennsylvania! While plodding along in the winter doldrums, then taking our first *real* family vacation to Florida, I hadn't shared the books we've been enjoying since before Christmas. So, here they are!

Term 3: What's Changed, What Remains the Same

When I first started gently homeschooling my oldest child for kindergarten, I didn't divide our time into semesters, terms, or quarters. We were basically unschoolers and enjoyed a relaxed homeschooling approach with lots of read alouds, a simple morning time, and tons of playing outside, meeting up with friends, and field trips.

This post contains affiliate links. Read my full disclosure to learn more.

If I did divide our time into any chunks, it was into months, as I would often choose some loose topics--usually drawn from the ideas we were reading about in The Story of the World, which we read as part of our morning time. For example, one month we read about ancient Egypt and another we read picture books about Islam.

As my son grew older, I got more interested in the Charlotte Mason method, so I experimented with dividing our formal homeschool time into 3 terms of 12 weeks as she did. And the verdict is . . . I love it! And while I don't think that there is any special quality about 12-week chunks of time, I do think there are some benefits to chunking your homeschooling endeavors into sections--even if they are loose or permeable.

Our Homeschooling Day with Ages 8, 6, 4, and Baby

This has been quite a different year in our homeschool since I documented our day last year. A new baby in May and two kids doing lessons instead of only one has stretched me in a lot of ways. This is how our days are looking lately.

6:30 AM

I wake to the sounds of twittering birds. It is actually quite a peaceful way to wake up. It sure beats the blaring alarm clock I used for many years in high school, college, and graduate school. I only wish my husband would have suggested this phone alarm sound years ago.

I nurse the baby in bed with me and then he goes to Daddy who dressed him and then returns him for another nursing session if needed before taking him to the kitchen to get breakfast ready. On the way out the door, he tosses me my watch so I can't ignore the time. Can you tell I'm having a hard time waking up these days?

What We're Reading: November 2018

Every month, it is the same story. I'm trying to educate the kids, take them outside, make nourishing meals, take care of myself, and maybe clean my house. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it keeps me nearly booked solid!

We had another good month of homeschooling. Overall attitudes have improved over the school year so far. My pre-reader is now a solid beginning reader (when he believes in himself!). Seeing him slowly but surely learn to read has only given me more faith in the power of homeschooling.

Now as we head into December, we'll be enjoying many seasonal reads at morning time and every time in between. In another two weeks, we'll take off two weeks to finish preparing for Christmas and enjoying the slow days between Christmas and New Years Day.

What We're Reading: October 2018

I honestly don't know what is happening to the time. I blink and it is gone. The baby is army crawling. How was it just yesterday that I was holding a newborn?

We wrapped up term 1 and squeezed all the kid's exam into 3 days so we could take a quick family trip to Williamsburg, VA. We took 2 full weeks off of lessons to enjoy field trips and just more margin to our days. We limped our way through the end of the busy soccer season, which seemed much harder this year with 2 children playing and a new baby. We spent not nearly enough hours outside but enjoyed ourselves when the weather cooperated or when we had friends along! We learned a few new plants and explored some places we hadn't seen in a while. And we read a lot of books, of course.

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Poetry

This month we finished our term 1 study of Emily Dickinson's poetry and we are moving on to our term 2 study of Walter de la Mare. We also used morning time to prepare for a homecoming weekend visit to the College of William and Mary, where my husband and I met as freshmen. We read the following every day for one week at morning time:

The Wind's Visit by Emily Dickenson
The College of William and Mary's Alma Mater by James Southall Wilson
Young Night Thought by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Cupboard by Walter de la Mare

If you want to see more poems that we enjoy, check out Poetry to Read Aloud.

Morning Time

Once again, we only finished a few books at morning, but our 30 minutes a day of reading here and there continues to add up.

We finished the following books at morning time this month:

The Red Fairy Book by Andrew Lang
By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Ox-cart Man by Donald Hall

What We're Reading: September 2018

Rain. Rain. Soccer. Soccer. Severe poison ivy reaction. Lots of reading. A piano "strike."

The month has flown by in a flurry of simple meals, loads of laundry that were not hung on the line, and some expected and unexpected doctor appointments for me, baby, and my 6-year-old who had a terrible bout of poison ivy rash that required steroids.

The month is ending with my husband being away for the weekend at a conference and I'm missing him as usual. I'm also really missing his heroic devotion to nighttime parenting every non-baby of the house as my son is needing to take medication every 6 hours round the clock!

Every month it feels like we didn't do a crazy amount of reading but when I tally up the list I reflect back on the life-giving words and special memories hiding behind the titles.

This month, I witnessed my 4-year-old daughter begin to be captivated by a chapter book for the first time (Charlotte's Web) and I got to explore some really big, interesting ideas about chemistry with my sons who are both excited about this topic.

Along with the reading for our formal homeschooling lessons, we've nourished ourselves on beautiful ideas, art, and language. More and more I am convinced that a feast of arts, singing, handicrafts, history, and nature study, is worth the cost of squeezing out longer math sessions or more writing practice!

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Poetry

This term we are focusing on the work of Emily Dickinson. We read the following every day for one week at morning time:

Hope by Emily Dickinson
Morning by Emily Dickinson
A Day by Emily Dickinson
The Saddest Noise, The Sweetest Noise by Emily Dickinson

If you want to see more poems that we enjoy, check out Poetry to Read Aloud.

Morning Time

Morning time has been slowly getting longer again, but I was surprised to discover that we only finished two books this month! We are reading several longer books just a little bit at a time and will be finishing a few of those soon. Also, we've been doing MadLibs many mornings after breakfast. Eventually, my 6-six-year-old will stop asking me what a noun is every single day, right?

We finished the following books at morning time this month:

Gilgamesh by Bernarda Bryson
Handel at the Court of Kings by Opal Wheeler

What We're Reading: August 2018

Well, we began Term 1 on July 23. Homeschooling has been quite an adjustment for my previously wild and free 6-year-old. I love how the Charlotte Mason Method is perfect at challenging students at every stage and ability while keeping lessons short, manageable, and varied.

And we are still quite busy enjoying the fine weather. These last 6 weeks we've been swimming, practicing soccer, and hiking. We also spent a week having lots of fun with their grandfather who visited us from Lousiana.

This post contains affiliate links. Read my full disclosure to learn more.

Poetry

This term we are focusing on the work of Emily Dickinson. We read the following every day for one week at morning time:

The Children's Hour by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Have you got a brook in your little heart by Emily Dickinson
There is no Frigate like a Book by Emily Dickinson
Summer Shower by Emily Dickinson
A Thunderstorm by Emily Dickinson
The Railway Train by Emily Dickinson
The Grass by Emily Dickinson

If you want to see more poems that we enjoy, check out Poetry to Read Aloud.

Morning Time

Harry is 4 months old! He is getting less fussy and more predictable. We've moved breakfast back inside where we miss the fresh air, but there are less moving parts and more attention to our readings.

This term, we are doing our Artist Study of Joseph Turner, a biography of the composer we are studying (Handel), as well as reading the narrative portions of Genesis and Matthew following the list of passages for year 2 on AmblesideOnline during our morning time. Of course, we are also adding it quite a few other titles to keep things interesting!

We finished the following books at morning time this month: