“Win the Morning, Win the Day!”

I see this quoted often in books, on blogs, Instagram feeds, and Facebook pages that are dedicated to productivity, entrepreneurship, personal growth, and habit development.

I’m not an entrepreneur, but I’m a bit of a productivity/habit/organization nerd, and over the last several months, I’ve been wondering how some of the excellent advice that is given in the business space might apply to homeschooling. One of the key concepts that I come across on a regular basis is the idea of setting yourself up to win your mornings. In the business world that often means being up at 5 am, getting in a good workout, answering emails, reviewing the day’s schedule of meetings, and planning out a list of tasks.

Winning the morning is a concept that can be applied to anyone’s life and I’ve got three topics that I’d like to share with you over the next several months that will help you win your homeschool mornings.

1. Morning Time
2. Building Habits
3. Bullet Journaling

Morning Time:

Mornings with my children have always been a treasured time. So much so that it was a challenging adjustment as my children grew and started to be out of the home most mornings with work and post-secondary classes. The memories of first morning smiles from my babies, first hugs of the day from my toddlers, and big kids who always seemed to be in the mood to snuggle first thing in the morning are some of my favourite mothering moments.

Our homeschool mornings have always been gentle and slow-moving, but productive. The nighttime nursing years rarely saw me out of bed before the little ones, but now, with my nursing years behind me, I’m able to get out of bed before my children and accomplish a few things before waking them up to get started with their day. I encourage you not to miss the opportunity we have to make special morning memories. It’s worth seeking out how to do them well.  And winning the morning sets you up for a great day.

I first heard about morning time at a homeschool conference (also called morning baskets, lunchtime learning, together time, morning meeting, family learning time, and circle time).  The concept is simply gathering your children together to learn something together and it is a great way to start the day.

We have tried implementing this concept at other times of the day, and you should do what works for you, but I think there are real benefits to sticking to mornings. Morning Time starts your day with order and routine, ensures that enrichment studies get done, and my favorite…if the rest of our day falls apart, we have still engaged in meaningful learning.

Getting Started with Morning Time

You don’t need heaps of time.  Start by setting aside 20-30 minutes and build up from there. I like to use several resources each morning, but you can start with one, and add on as you go.  If you are already doing a regular morning devotion, add one more component to your Morning Time to get you started.

Storage for Morning Time Resources

When I first heard about Morning Time, it was referred to as a Morning Basket and I opted to use an actual basket. We outgrew that basket quickly so I currently use a 3-tiered rolling cart, but you could use a bookshelf or box. Portable storage is ideal if you think you might want to do morning time curled up on your bed one day and at the kitchen table the next.

Scheduling your Homeschool Morning Time

Once you have built up a stack of resources you will want to consider scheduling.  My preference is a flexible loop schedule. I set things up so that I can move a resource that I’ve used one day to the back of the stack to wait for another day.  The only one I use daily is the bible resource.

You could opt for a set schedule too, where you have particular resources that are used on certain days.

I prefer to keep things flexible.  I make morning time a priority but there are times where I have to set it aside or we have to cut our time short so looping through the resources seems to work best for us.

Ages & Stages and Morning Time Resources

I’m currently spending my mornings with my four youngest (ages 7-15).  I have found that when we have used a resource that is geared towards younger children, the older ones have found the review helpful; when the resource is geared towards older ones, the younger ones still seem to be able to glean bits of information that build over time. I would encourage you not to fret over the age for which a particular resource is intended.  The bible resource we are currently reading is designed more for my 10-year-old but I know that it is a helpful review for my 12 & 15-year-old and my 7-year-old is making connections to the resource we used last year that was geared towards his age.

Key Components of Your Morning Time

Devotions. Reading a chapter-a-day from the bible works well or you can opt for a Bible storybook. At times we’ve added bible memory work. And when we attended a large church, we had a special prayer project where we rotated through praying for our missionaries (a practical geography lesson too). I would highly recommend any of these resources; we’ve used many of them.  The Ology and Wonderfull are next on our list after we are finished with The Children’s Illustrated Bible.

Other Bible Storybook Resources Include:

The Big Picture Story Bible

The Children’s Illustrated Bible

The Child’s Story Bible

The Story Bible

The Golden Children’s Bible

Jesus Storybook Bible

Story Bible for Older Children

The 100 Most Important Events in Christian History

When you’re ready, add a creative component: drawing, picture studies, poetry, a simple seasonal craft, and music study are a few ideas.  Keep in mind that the idea isn’t to do all of these every day. You want to loop through them throughout the week.

Bible Picture/Picture Study Portfolios

How to Draw…

A Child’s Book of Poems

Favorite Poems Old and New

The Gift of Music

Great Composers

A Child’s Introduction to the Orchestra

Read Alouds are my favourite resource.  I’m always finding books that I want to read to my children and have quite the stack. Read Alouds help you introduce your children to all kinds of topics; during a typical week, we might learn about owls, a far-off land, a historical figure, and how cities are built.  Read alouds are the best!

Katy No Pocket

Random House Book of Fairy Tales

King Arthur

My Side of the Mountain

Call It Courage

Wingfeather Saga

Buford the Little Bighorn

Blueberries for Sal

All of a Kind Family

The Green Ember Series

Listening for Lions

Review in the form of games, flashcards, and discussions.  This is a new component for us.  I’m trying to be more purposeful in our discussion topics and have recently purchased a few games to help us review math facts.

…Facts That Stick (Math Facts)

If you were a…(grammar picture books)

I haven’t tried long-term projects but I think this could work too.  Personally, I would avoid projects for morning time that will be too time-consuming with set up or clean up.

While everyone is gathered, I like to spend a few minutes on the administrative details of our day and week.  This is where I assign chores, give reminders about appointments, and review expectations about the grocery store trip that is planned for that day.

I love a well-written homeschool curriculum but the resources that I find that are easily pulled into our family morning time are my absolute favorite!

Check out our Morning Basket Whiteboard Video on our Youtube channel. It’s a great summary about how to get started with a Morning Basket/Morning Time.

by Adrianne Curwen

Adrianne is a wife to a public-school educator/administrator and a homeschooling Mama to seven children, ranging in age from 7 to 23. She believes that we have a unique opportunity as homeschoolers to design individualized education that suits giftings, interests, and passions. She and her husband have used a blend of registered homeschooling, enrolment with independent DL schools, and participation in public trade school programs to design individualized programs for their children.  She is passionate about using as many read-alouds, picture books, novels, and conversations to educate her children but also gets excited by the amazing homeschool-designed curriculum that’s out there.  Adrianne is thrilled by her new role as Communication Specialist for Classical Education Books and is grateful to have an opportunity to learn something new.  She is grateful, every day, for her saviour, Jesus Christ, and has no greater joy than when she sees her most important missions field walk with Him.

The post Do Mornings Well! Part 1 appeared first on Classical Education Books.

If you want your kids to use the skills they’ve carefully and patiently built up over the last ten months over their summer break, or if you want to bolster your fine arts repertoire, or if you simply want to expose a curious child to music education to see if they might be interested in music lessons come the new school year, then this blog post is for you!

Five easy tips to keep the love of creating music alive in your kids during their summer break. 

Listen

Listening to Classical music is an easily missed component of learning music. Students can get so caught up in perfecting their pieces that they forget the bigger picture of what they are a part of. Go through their music books and find the composers that they’re playing (names are usually in the top right corner on the page), then take to Youtube and Spotify and find out what else they’ve written. Bonus points if you can find videos of professional performers and symphony orchestras to expose your kids to good posture, performance practice, and stage presence.

Books like Meet the Orchestra (for smaller children) and The Story of the Orchestra (for somewhat bigger children) also do a fabulous job of introducing kids to the different instruments used in Western Art Music and can be especially beneficial if your child only has experience with one instrument. The Gift of Music is another fabulous tool if you want to study a particular composer in depth. 

Research 

Using books like The Story of the Orchestra (for middle children) and The Gift of Music (for older children), take the composers you’ve found and listen to their pieces with some background knowledge of the composer. Did you know that Beethoven was already going deaf as he wrote his infamous Fifth symphony? Did you know that Schumann was likely schizophrenic? Did you know that Bach had twenty children? Did you know that much of Mendelssohn’s music was likely written by his sister, Fanny? This sort of background knowledge can inform how you and your children listen to and appreciate the music, and will also benefit them as they go on to play music by these composers. 

Colour

Colouring is a remarkably efficient and flexible way to engage children of all ages in music appreciation. Using colouring books like the Musical Instruments colouring book, the Great Composers colouring book, and the Music Activity Book gives your children a double whammy experience, combining both creative work and studious work. Simply giving them a piece of blank paper and telling them to draw a story that they think the music sounds like is another simple and quick way to get them to listen and use their imagination. Program music (instrumental music that was written to purposefully depict a story) is a great place to start. Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals, Tchaikovsky’s Peter and the Wolf, Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King, and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons are great pieces that come with stories already. If you think your child is ready for something more abstract, go for pieces like Beethoven’s 5th symphony, Handel’s Water Music Suite, or Schoenberg’s Piano Suite. 

Expand

Take the opportunity in the summer to expand your child’s (and your own!) taste in music beyond whatever is on the radio or on your playlists already. Listen to Harry Connick Jr. if your child has never been exposed to jazz. Find a family-friendly musical like Newsies and memorize all the lyrics. Discover different styles of folk and fiddle music like Bluegrass, Irish, Old-Time, and Metis. Or go farther abroad and listen to music from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. You’ll find instruments not found in the resources above, and your kids will develop an ear for a wide variety of styles!  

Create

While serious composition can scare off the perfectionists in your children, getting comfortable exploring their instrument outside of structured music is a great exercise that will only serve them in their study of music. Learning simple songs by ear (trying to play a song without looking at a score, just going by how it sounds) is a good place to start. Imitating nature is a good next step – can they make their instrument sound like rain? Like a thunderstorm? Like birds singing? Like a kangaroo jumping around? Like leaves swirling? What about events like a race, or a ballet, or going to church? Exploration like this strengthens familiarity with the instrument and pushes children to take ownership of their tone. 

I hope that after reading through these tips your creative juices are flowing! The ability to appreciate music of all types and forms is an invaluable gift you can give your children, and I encourage the parents reading to nurture this God-given gift in your home. The study of music brings beauty, perseverance, expression, and satisfaction to everyone who digs a little deeper into the history and technique of how music is built. All the best in your summer studies! 

Abigail is a Royal Conservatory of Music graduate; she completed her ARCT in Piano Pedagogy in 2020 and she teaches piano and violin. Abigail is the oldest of 7 and was homeschooled from start to finish. She likes to listen to Bach, Beethoven, and jazz. Other interests include reading, watercolours, and crochet.

The post Summer Music – Tips & Resources appeared first on Classical Education Books.

Today, I’m writing a letter to my past self.  There is so much I’d like that young mama to know and my hope is that it can make a difference for you.

Dear Young Mama,

You are struggling to make a decision about whether to homeschool your children or to enroll them in public school.  There are many things to consider but here is the truth.  It will be easier to send your children to school if you decide that homeschooling isn’t a good fit than it will be to pull your children from school if you decide that school isn’t a good fit for you.

Consider finances.

I know the plan is for you to go back to work once your children are school age but the finances are going to be there as you need them.  The Lord is going to provide and it’s going to be faith building to see how He does it.  You are going to have to budget, there will be sacrifices, and lean times but there will also be amazing financial surprises along the way.  Start today by praying for financial wisdom.  Ask the Lord to reveal to you any financial beliefs, desires, and habits that are contrary to His word.  Spend the needed time uprooting financial idols.  Confess the worldly desires of your heart, He knows what they are anyway.  You will need His grace to change, you can’t do it in your own strength.

Once you have started to work on your heart, you need to implement some tools.  Start by writing out a budget and then figure out a system to keep track of the spending.  There is no need to buy a program for this, pen and paper will work just fine but I am a fan of YNAB (You Need A Budget).

Take some time to figure out exactly what your husband makes per hour (after income tax and all the other deductions).  This will help you when you are tempted to spend beyond what is needed.  Ask yourself in that moment, “Is this item worth my husband having to work X amount of hours for us/me to have this?”

Finally, figure out what you can do to earn some “Proverbs 31” income.  The size of this endeavor will depend on the time and energy you have, the level of responsibility your husband has at his job, and the amount of home and family responsibilities that he’s able to take on.  But please realize that even if you can only earn and save $100/month, it will richly bless your family 20 years from now.

Consider relationships.

Your friend group is going to change and not all family members are going to be supportive of homeschooling.  Don’t worry, you are going to meet heaps of incredible families and you’ll meet your most treasured friend amongst those families.  Try to remain quietly confident and strong-minded but tender-hearted towards the critics.  The fruit grows slowly, be patient, they’ll start to see.

Don’t consider whether you are smart enough.

Others will question and you’ll wonder if you are smart enough to homeschool your children.  Don’t waste your time pondering this question.  There will be an incredible variety of curricula for you to choose from that will help you educate your children.  Many people have gone before you and they will be a blessed resource.  Ask lots of questions, take notes, don’t be afraid to tweak the advice to fit you and your family, and twenty years from now you’ll be writing a blog post encouraging mamas with your own thoughts.

Consider your priorities.

Develop a firm grasp of what your priorities are.  Build a habit of being in the Word daily, become a prayer warrior, and worship, and serve on a regular basis.  Make your husband your next priority.  It’s a mistake to neglect this relationship and it’s so easy to do.  Next in line are the children.  It can get tricky here as you figure out how to serve the Lord as both a mama and teacher to your children; mama should show up first.

Consider how you will organize.

If you have a kitchen table, then you have space to educate your children.

What you will need are bookshelves.  I’ve yet to go into a homeschooling home that doesn’t have walls full of books.  Homeschool mamas develop a special relationship with books so get yourselves some bookshelves.

Paper!  There is so much paper.  It enters your house in many forms: workbooks, worksheets, journals, creative writing, reports, printables, artwork, and more.  Spend some time thinking about what you are going to keep and how you are going to store it.  Do Not, I repeat, Do Not buy a plastic bin to store all the paper thinking that you’ll get to it another day.

Consider time.

• Theatre Class
• Dance Class
• Creative Writing Class
• Art Class
• Self-Defence Class
• Martial Arts
• Soccer
• Football
• Baseball
• Basketball
• Hockey
• Gymnastics
• Homeschool Co-op
• Youth Group
• Swimming Lessons
• Skating Lessons
• Outdoor Club
• Archery
• Field Trips

There is no shortage of good things to participate in.  Take time to create a vision and some boundaries regarding how you will spend your time and then make decisions that align with your vision and boundaries.

Don’t ever consider that homeschooling will save your children.

There is no checklist or formula that ensures your children will become followers of Christ.  If there were, you would be owed the glory for the salvation of your children.

Homeschooling will protect your children from worldly influences for a time, but it won’t protect them from their own sinful nature.  Make no mistake, sin can still breed in the absence of worldly influences.

Be encouraged, young mama. He will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in Him.  Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord himself is the Rock eternal. (Isaiah 26:3-4).

by Adrianne Curwen

Adrianne is a wife to a public-school educator/administrator and a homeschooling Mama to seven children, ranging in age from 7 to 23. She believes that we have a unique opportunity as homeschoolers to design individualized education that suits giftings, interests, and passions. She and her husband have used a blend of registered homeschooling, enrolment with independent DL schools, and participation in public trade school programs to design individualized programs for their children.  She is passionate about using as many read-alouds, picture books, novels, and conversations to educate her children but also gets excited by the amazing homeschool-designed curriculum that’s out there.  Adrianne is thrilled by her new role as Communication Specialist for Classical Education Books and is grateful to have an opportunity to learn something new.  She is grateful, every day, for her saviour, Jesus Christ, and has no greater joy than when she sees her most important missions field walk with Him.

The post Dear Young Mama appeared first on Classical Education Books.