Thursday

Morning Meeting Resources for 2014

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I wanted to share exactly what we’re using for our Morning Meeting time this school year with a fourth grader and a first grader. I decided to introduce a Morning Meeting this year {find out why I made this decision in this post} that would focus our minds for the school day. As you can see below our Morning Meeting is divided into five headings: truth, wisdom, beauty and goodness, focus, and inspiration. These categories reference the new scholé approach of our homeschool.

Morning Meeting Resources for 2014

Items marked with an asterisk are what we do on Monday. Since it is our shortened school day, we also have a shortened Morning Meeting on that day. Here’s what we’re using this year and how we’re using it:

Morning Meeting Schedule

Truth:

Hymn*: Hymns for a Kid's Heart, Vol. 1

I use the free sheet music that you can print off here, but you can also purchase a book version that will give the history of the hymn and the accompanying CD will have children singing the hymns. We learn one or two verses each week of each song until we know the entire thing.

Prayer*: One of us will pray for the upcoming school day, people on our prayer list, or anything else that they would like.

Bible Reading*: Passage for the day from Bible Study Guide for All Ages or Wisdom and the Millers: Proverbs for Children

On Monday we read Wisdom and the Millers: Proverbs for Children and the corresponding verses from Proverbs. Tuesday through Friday we read whatever chapter our Bible lesson from Bible Study Guide for All Ages will cover later that day. I do it this way because we do a lesson from Bible Study Guide only Tuesday through Friday, so on Monday I wanted something else to read that was Bible-based, but a bit different. The Millers book fit the bill perfectly; my kids LOVE this book!

Bible Memory Work*: I’m not really using a source for this right now other than the fact that Heart of Dakota’s Preparing guide had students memorizing passages from the book of Psalms so we just continued with that even though Chipette is no longer using the guide. I plan on being more intentional about what we’re memorizing next year. I’m seriously considering using one of the Simply Charlotte Mason verse packs.

Wisdom:

Timeline: This is leftover from our brief foray into Classical Conversations a few years ago so I’m using the old timeline chant. We take it a LOT more slowly than CC did since we have more weeks to learn it.

Skip Counting: Another hold over from Classical Conversations. We use their skip counting songs to memorize skip counting by 2’s through 12’s. I also use these skip counting charts for a visual while we sing the song.

History Reading*: The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child: Volumes 1-3 (in volume 2 and 3 only the topics that are not about American history) and The American Story: 100 True Tales from American History

Last year I wrote about how I felt our history study was lacking and my new approach to change it. While some of my thoughts and directions have changed one thing hasn’t: reading through a world history and American history spine every year. For the first 27 weeks, we read one chapter of Story of the World every school day and the last 9 weeks we read two chapters from The American Story each day. This reading doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with our history studies, but to keep a running narrative in their head of events.

Beauty and Goodness:

Art or Music Appreciation: Lesson plans for Year One from A Mind in the Light blog 

These lesson plans are fun, simple, and easy to do. Technically they are written for a first grader, but Chipette gets just as much out of them as Magpie.

Poetry Reading and Memory Work: Poetry for Young People: William Blake, Poetry for Young People: Emily Dickinson, Where the Sidewalk Ends: Poems and Drawings, and Poetry for the Grammar Stage 

I love the Poetry for Young People series. The notes that go with the poems help you understand why the author wrote it, the meaning behind it, and footnotes help you explain vocabulary. We read out of the Poetry for Young People books twice a week and the other two days we read our funny poetry book Where the Sidewalk Ends. My kids adore Shel Silverstein! This is the third of his poetry books we’ve read. I use Poetry for the Grammar Stage for memorization ideas along with different poetry lists I find online. We don’t necessarily memorize the poems we are reading, although I will have Chipette memorize some Emily Dickinson. Also, each girl has her own poem to commit to memory. They do not memorize the same piece.

Art/ Music Reading (Monday)*: Various books that tie into our art/music appreciation study or that are suggested to read in the lesson plans above. We especially love Mike Venezia’s two series: Getting to Know the World's Greatest Composers and Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists.

Shakespeare/Character or Plutarch/Nature for six weeks, then switch (Tuesday-Friday): For six weeks at a time we read from Shakespeare twice a week and a character training book twice a week, and then the next six weeks we read from Plutarch twice a week and a nature book twice a week. We do three of these twelve week rotations each year. I’ll discuss what we’re using for each subject below.

Shakespeare: I’m loosely following Ambleside Online’s Shakespeare schedule so this year we’re studying Twelfth Night, Macbeth, and As You Like It. For Twelfth Night and William Shakespeare's Macbeth we read through Bruce Coville’s picture books, and for As You Like It, I read from Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare . When we are in a six week rotation of studying Shakespeare, I also use How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare to work on memorizing passages from the play instead of doing poetry memorization during that time. The girls are getting ready to act out a scene from Twelfth Night very soon. I also try to watch a kid friendly version of the play at some point as well.

Character: We’ve been reading through The Children's Book of Virtues this year. I grabbed this mainly because I already owned it, but the kids have really been enjoying it. The discussions that some of the stories have started have been wonderful!

Plutarch: Again Ambleside Online to the rescue! I’ve been using their Plutarch schedule and their study guides by Anne White to help me read through and discuss Plutarch with the kids. Believe it or not, they love reading Plutarch. The only thing that makes things a little bit difficult is that I use Our Young Folks' Plutarch (Yesterday's Classics) so the page numbers don’t line up exactly with the study guide, but it’s been easy enough to adapt.

Nature: Another off my personal shelves choice, but these books are wonderful. We are reading through Christian Liberty Nature Reader Book 3 . Great books that give a glimpse at nature through a very story-like manner. I love the comprehension question at the end of each chapter. It makes narration a breeze! 

Focus:

Rotates weekly between content subjects: Part of my new approach to homeschooling has been to teach the content subjects a little differently. We rotate out what we study every week: week one is history, week two is geography, week three is science, and week four is interest led learning. Since we’ve already done one of these rotations I can tell you what we used for each week.

History Week: We were studying ancient Egypt so we read Pyramid by David Macaulay for two days and Pharaoh's Boat by David Weitzman for two days.

Geography Week: I still own my set of Childcraft Encyclopedias from when I was a girl, so I pulled Places to Know: Childcraft #10: The How and Why Library from the collection, and we read through it during geography week. It makes a great spine and the blurbs about famous places are short. I try to read one section over the course of the week which usually means two or three short entries every day. This book single-handedly inspired my love of travel and geography when I was a child!

Science Week: This is probably the easiest week of all since the spine for our science program is a living book anyway. We read the appropriate section of our Sassafras Science book each day. I usually try to cover two chapters in one week.

Interest Led Week: For interest led week Chipette wanted to learn about mermaids and Magpie couldn’t decide so I helped her choose fairy tales as her study. For this week I followed Chipette’s lead, and we read four stories from Mermaid Tales from Around the World. Of course, we had to read the other stories in the collection too since they liked it so much, but we did that at bedtime or Lit for Lunch. 

Inspiration:

Tales/myths*: Tales of Ancient Egypt , D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths, and D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths

I love mythology and have happily passed on that love to Chipette, so this year was the year of myths and we’ve loved it.

Don’t let this huge list and all of these resources overwhelm you! I rotate things out and plan so that we get through most of these resources in a year. Having a rich and full Morning Meeting has allowed me to be more relaxed about our afternoon work on the content subjects. Morning Meeting has become a requested thing in our house, so I’m glad we started it back this year.

Meeting in the morning is the best way to start the day in the tree house,

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2 comments:

  1. I love these ideas - it seems so relaxed and restful. I've been listening to Christoper Perrin's talks about restful learning. I'll be making some changes to our schedule this year. Thank you for sharing how restful learning looks in your home. You've given me some fabulous ideas.

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    1. I'm so glad, Tonia! I can't wait to see what you come up with! And I agree..Dr. Perrin's talks are gold!

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