Last weekend I took a teacher in-servie weekend. I did some reading and a lot of watching of Periscopes, especially from Julie Bogart at Bravewriter and some of the other homeschooling mom's.
The biggest take-away I had was from the Morning Routine Scope and I decided that that was something I needed to implement. It has changed our days!
For quite a few weeks we had been floundering with a start time for our days. We'd be up but be lazy at getting chores done, getting dressed, figuring out where to begin our school day. The morning routine has really helped focus our days (or at least our mornings!)
The girls get up, have breakfast and are allowed to watch one show, usually a PBS one. While they are doing that I get dressed if I'm not yet and do the morning dishes & get a load of laundry going. After the show the girls get dressed then we all meet back in the living room for what we've started called "Morning Basket Time".
All it is is that basket up there filled with books. I rotate the books, Julie suggested a "rich and varied" pile of books so that's what we're going for, although for the most part I used what we had on hand for the week. As I listened to other morning routine scopes my library hold grew so big & so fast that I reached the limit and had to wait for some to come in before putting anymore on hold!
We begin our time with a short prayer & I have read a few passages from the Bible I think twice this week. This is also the time when we do our weather tracking for the day: I printed out a current month calendar & we observe out the window, she draws the weather then opens the weather app on my phone to see the temperature and the forecast.
After the weather it's onto our current read a-loud, a picture book or two and I did read a non-fiction book (a biography of Dr. Seuss) on Tuesday.
While I am reading the girls are coloring at my feet on the floor. Except for the biography, Marie-Therese was enthralled by that, that it was a true story about a real person who wrote and drew for a living. Now I am on the hunt for more non-fiction & biographies for her! When Daddy got home she picked up the book and took him step by step through Dr. Seuss' life. It was neat to watch!
After morning basket time we head to the table for some table work or art or the girls play while I do a few chores. This time has really focused our mornings and our homeschool flow. It has jump started our motivation again as we come out of February.
A list of this week's Morning Basket books:
Nature's Paintbox (we also used this for Poetry Tea time this week)
Dr. Seuss
Charlotte's Web (just began it this morning)
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