Morning Basket Journals

So, back at the beginning of the school year, I posted our Morning Basket Plans.  Since it's been a little while since I posted that, I thought I'd give a bit of an update on how that's going before continuing that series on our school plans. J

 

For the most part, not much has changed.   We are still loving our morning walk (and, now that things are cooler, enjoying a cup of hot cocoa or tea over our morning basket when we return on days when time allows), and our rotation of readings, songs, and drill is going well.   The one thing that I noticed when we had Term 2 exams (6 weeks in to our new school year – our AO Years and our School Years are kind of a mess – we roll with it) was that retention of material that we covered as a group during our Morning Basket was much less than the subjects they do individually with me.   I don't know if that's because it's the first thing we do each morning, so it gets crowded out by their individual subjects by the end of the day, or if it's because they are more likely to tune out or rely on others to narrate for them, or some of both.  So, in an effort to remedy that I introduced the Morning Basket Journal:

 

 

The idea behind these is quite simple, really.  At the end of our Morning Basket time each morning we take about 5 minutes to record something we read, sang, or talked about that particularly struck us – something we want to remember.  The form this can take is up to each individual.  It can be a sketch, or a brief written narration, or a commonplace-type entry of a quote from a reading or song.

 

 

For whatever it's worth, this isn't a type of notebook that Charlotte Mason herself specifically advocated.  (Of course, Morning Time didn't originate with her either J.)  That said, I do believe that it is keeping with her principles – it is a form of narration, really.   It begins with a blank page, and it is up to each individual to decide what they want to record – what they took from that morning's 'feast'.   The idea was partly inspired by some of the principles of Charlotte Mason style notebooking from Laurie Bestvater's The Living Page and partly from Jenny Rallens' video on The Liturgical Classroom.

 

 

The six year old sometimes has a little trouble getting started, but overall, this has been quite a successful venture so far.  They enjoy taking those few minutes to record and share something that struck them.  It remains to be seen if their exam results will be different at the end of Term 3 in comparison with Term 2…but for now, I am satisfied that there is Truth, Goodness, and Beauty seeping down into their souls, which is the ultimately the goal, exam results aside.  I've been keeping a journal with them, and have been struck by how much *I* have gained from taking these few minutes to reflect.  Morning Time is good for Mama's soul too, y'all.

 

 

Fall 2016 Morning Basket Plans

So, our school year is now pretty well underway and running pretty smoothly…so I thought I'd share what we're doing over the next few posts.

 

Morning Basket Plans

Co-op Plans

Individual Lessons for First, Secondish-Third, and Fifth Grade

Putting all the Pieces Together: Our Daily, Weekly, and Yearly Rhythm

 

Today, let's talk Morning Basket.

 

We are still starting our school day with a Morning Walk.  I cannot begin to tell you what a huge difference this has made in our home.  Even on mornings where people wake up cranky and breakfast is kind of a disaster (yes, we have those days in our house, please tell me you do sometimes too?) – this hits the reset button.  We come back to the couch to begin our time together refreshed and ready.

 

Our Morning Basket lasts 30-45 minutes at the moment, and runs somewhat like this:

 

Morning Prayer

Bible – Reading, Narration, Discussion

Singing: Hymn or Psalm

Read-Aloud from our Rotation with Narration and Discussion

Singing: Folksong or Latin Song

Swedish Drill

 

Here are the Resources I'm using for each of those categories this fall:

 

Morning Prayer:

I use parts of the Morning Prayer service from The Trinity Mission – a nicely organized, user-friendly resource based on The Book of Common Prayer.

 

Bible:

Joshua and Judges with the commentary by J. Paterson-Smyth.  Just a note on those: these were the actual commentaries Charlotte Mason recommended for use in her schools.  He was a product of his times (Victorian) and denomination (Church of Ireland, I think), and so there are places where I disagree with him.  This is not a resource to use blindly.  That said, thoughtfully using excerpts and discussion prompts has given us a lot of food for thought and brought these familiar Bible stories alive in a new way.  So they have been a good resource for us.  If you decide to try them, do be sure to read through the lessons ahead of time and decide how you want to handle them.

 

Hymns and Psalms:

We are mostly following the AmblesideOnline Hymn rotation, although I shuffled a couple around – so the hymns we will actually be learning (one per month) are: Jesus, The Very Thought of Thee; Jesus Lover of My Soul; Be Still My Soul; and Take My Life and Let It Be.  On alternate days, we are continuing to sing our way through Psalm 119 from the Book of Psalms for Worship.

 

Read-Aloud Rotation:

Pilgrim's Progress (Bunyan) – the actual text.  We started this last year, and then in the craziness of moving this spring it got set aside.  We are starting again from the beginning since it had been 6 months+ since we last touched it.

 

Taming of the Shrew is our Shakespeare pick this fall.  We had a great time with Twelfth Night during our summer term, so our children are excited to give the Bard another go.  We started off with Lamb's retelling in Tales from Shakespeare, a film version, and making little wooden character people, and now are beginning the real thing.

 

Child's History of Art: Sculpture  (Hillyer) - I finally scored a fairly reasonably priced copy of this out-of-print gem.  I decided to skip over the painting section since we have learned about a lot of painters through doing picture study, but we are looking forward to expanding our knowledge of art by reading slowly through the sections on sculpture and architecture.

 

Parables from Nature (Gatty) – We've read through this book once already when Michelle was working her way through AO Years 1-3, where it is scheduled, and now have started over again for the sake of the younger two.  Michelle is enjoying giving it a second listen though – fun to see what she remembers from these stories, and how different aspects of them stand out to her now.

 

Trial and Triumph (Hannula) – I had originally wanted to keep this book as it is scheduled – stories of famous people from church history tied in with each year's other history reading across AO Years 1-6.  But this is also a book that needs to be read aloud because it has a little more of an anti-Catholic slant to it than I care for, so it requires a bit of editing and discussion. It got to be too much to be reading from three separate places with three separate students in three separate years.  That said…I didn't want to ditch these stories completely, so our compromise was moving it to a morning basket read.  We do pull out our timelines at add each person we read about, which helps them orient themselves to what other historical events were taking place around the same time, so it works out.

 

Elementary Geography (Charlotte Mason)  - We started slowly working our way through this book last year, and are continuing it into this year, taking time for hands-on exploration and application where appropriate.

 

In the read-aloud rotation, we shoot for reading a short section from Shakespeare and Pilgrim's Progress every week since these are ongoing stories and I don't want too long to elapse between each reading.  The others have more self-contained chapters, so we loop through them more slowly on the other days, hitting each about once every other week.

 

Singing, Again:

For folksongs, we are following the AmblesideOnline rotations.  On alternate days we sing Latin songs from Memoria Press' Lingua Angelica.  This fall, we are hoping to learn Angus Dei, Sanctus, and Veni, Veni Emmanuel (during Advent of course!).

 

Swedish Drill:

Hooray for my lovely friend Dawn for making Drill accessible for us regular folks.  I am pretty much following the outline of exercises and routines she is sharing over at Afterthoughts.  My kids have been loving this!  It also provides a bit of a movement break between our morning basket time on the couch and moving to the rest of our school day.

 

Other 'group' things that don't fit into Morning Basket or Co-op Time:

In addition to our 'formal' group studies, we continue our habit of reading a family free-read literature choice at bedtime.  My husband leads the Evening Prayer service from the Trinity Mission (portions of it anyway) at supper, usually using the New Testament Scripture reading since we are currently studying the Old Testament during our school time.   We just planted our first garden, which is our 'family project' for now….and when the cold, early-dark, winter evenings set in I'm hoping to spend some time with handicrafts.  

The one thing I am struggling to find a place for is drawing.  We enjoy drawing sessions when we have them, and I originally thought we might regroup everyone after lunch on afternoons when we don't have other activities….but that hasn't worked out as well as I hoped.  Still searching for the best place to slip this in….

 

Morning Time and Group Studies - Fall 2015

So now we come down to the REAL nitty gritty: curriculum choices we've made for this year.  You can see where each of these segments fit in to our daily routine here and some of the rationale behind our choices in the Reflections on Relationship series (index here).

Our Morning Time is fairly pared back this year from previous years.  We have moved poetry and memory work to each child's individual time with Mom as we found that this works best for our family dynamics. We've also dropped French almost entirely for now.  French studies have never gone smoothly for us, I think at least in part because it's been a little bit of an emotionally-charged, feeling-the-pressure sort of situation since we "have to learn it because we live in French-speaking Africa" rather than a delight or particular interest of anyone involved.  So while we are away from Africa, we're taking a break from French too.  We'll re-evaluate that plan when we have a better idea of our future plans.  So far, this simplified Morning Time is going really well.  I had planned this to take up to 45 minutes, 15 minutes on each topic, but very often we finish in less than that (which helps especially on those mornings that we start a bit late).  Michelle and James are expected to listen and participate fully (by narrating), Elizabeth is required to sit with us and listen but not to narrate unless she wants to.


Devotional: Reading from Starr Meade's Comforting Hearts, Teaching Minds (based on the Heidelberg Catechism), Prayer, and singing a Psalm (a fairly new practice for us - we are using the Book of Psalms for Worship as a resource) 

Read-Aloud: We read aloud from one of the following each day, rotating through them on a loop:

Parables from Nature (Gatty) - currently finishing up the chapters scheduled in Year 3, then we'll cycle back through Years 1 and 2 again for the sake of the younger children.  I don't think it will do Michelle any harm to hear them again since they are quite rich and deep.  Her experience of them at age 10 will be quite different than it was at age 7.

One Small Square: Pond (Silver) - with By Pond and River (Buckley) as a follow up when we finish this.  We are doing a pond study as our nature study focus this semester.

The Avion my Uncle Flew (Fisher) - This is our nod to French for this year.  It is a code-switching story that I have heard recommended repeatedly.

Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales - from the Year 2 free reads.  I always like to include a fairy tale selection in our group read-alouds.

Ordinarily I would include Tales from Shakespeare (Lamb) in this rotation too, but they are doing Shakespeare at their co-op this year, so I left it out.


Activity: Again, we rotate through one of these each day on a looping schedule:

•  Folksongs (Cherry Ripe, Kookaburra, and the Brahms Lullaby this term)
• Composer Study (Brahms this term)
• Picture Study (Degas this term)
• Map Drill (on the USA this term)
• Charlotte Mason's Elementary Geography - trying to include the hands-on demonstrations she mentions in the text when applicable.

Outside of our Morning Time, we also do certain activities like Nature Study and Handicrafts as a group, usually in the afternoons.  A nature outing and time for journaling is scheduled in for Friday afternoon.  Handicraft projects tend to be tackled a little more loosely - I will perhaps introduce new handicrafts on a free afternoon or weekend, and then we'll just work at them here and there as we have time available.   We have the Artistic Pursuits Elementary 4-5 curriculum on hand for drawing instruction too, and did do (and enjoy) a few lessons over the summer, but they are also doing a drawing class at our co-op this year....So we'll see how much we use that.  It's available for anyone who would like to use it, but it won't be required since they are getting other drawing instruction elsewhere.

Our evening family time is also done as a group and is our primary Bible instruction time (we don't follow the Ambleside Bible suggestions as we've always preferred to do this as a group).   We sing a hymn, read, narrate, and discuss a short passage from the Bible (currently going through the Old Testament using Marty Machowski's Long Story Short) and pray.  We follow this up with a family literature read aloud, usually pulled from the Ambleside Online Free Reading suggestions.

What does your Morning Time Look like?  What other studies do you pursue as a group?