Friday, September 19, 2008

Explaining Morning Time

I thought I would elaborate a little on our school day. Over the years I have found a few things that help me implement the things that are important to our family. Those things may not be helpful to you at all. Everyone has different priorities. By the way, my dh likes to remind me that priority really doesn't have a plural. Think about it.

So you probably imagine me doing all the things I think are important along with all the things you think are important but that isn't how it works. Have you ever been in a group of homeschooling mothers and listened to the conversation and come away feeling like you were failing in 6 different areas? We all want to be the composite supermom and we project that onto women we admire.

Our morning time has become a way for me to fit in the things that would slip between the cracks. As an added benefit, it promotes a family culture and leads to daily family worldview discussions. It also squeezes out some other things that I also think are important but not important enough to give up the benefits I have described.

Recently a mom asked my 12th grader if he liked science. He said simply, "no." She explained that if she had him in her cover school he would have grown to love science but it was hard to love it without a teacher. I concede the point. BUT I did have a choice to find an outside school to teach my son to love science; I then would have had to drive 45 minutes one way several times a week. It also would have cost as much as a college course. It would have literally squeezed out of our day and our budget the course of humanities that I felt was more important. I made the choice, knowing my options, to stay home and spend more hours on humanities via Gileskirk.

And so it goes. We each have the same number of hours. We each need to find the time for what we find important. That will differ greatly from homeschool to homeschool.

Now if I was just starting out with morning time there wouldn't be anything to review each day. So I would work on a new piece until it became my first review piece and I moved on to something new. I wouldn't sing 2 hymns a day until I knew one very well.

My 11 yo, 10yo & 7 yo all do the same thing each day. So before and after morning meeting they work through those things: math, spelling (computer program), math drills(computer), grammar page, handwriting page, reading ( mostly free reading, some assigned or suggested).

My 14yo, 15yo & 17yo work through detailed lists that I have pre-planned in Homeschool Tracker software.

My 4yos does his best to thwart the whole show.

No comments: