In re-assessing my homeschool year this summer, I decided to use up a few Audible credits to purchase audiobooks to listen to while decluttering and packing up my house.  Yes we are moving!!  The first book that I listened to was Julie Bogart’s https://thebravelearner.com/.  This book was a most welcome breath of fresh air to my homeschool philosophy and routines.  Julie Bogart’s Charlotte Mason influenced unschooling homeschool philosophy spoke to me this summer as a way to bring enjoyment and fun into schooling my 8 and 10 year old.  Unfortunately, being that I listened to the audiobook version I don’t have any of Julie’s brilliant, mind-blowing quotes written down that I can share with you.  What I can share is how her book has influenced my plans for my homeschool school year.

After ten years of homeschool you would think that I would have heard of Morning Baskets or Morning Time but unfortunately this is a new concept to me.  That being said when we first started homeschooling we did ‘morning time’ on the couch and just didn’t know it.  Myself, the two eldest and their baby sister would gather on the couch and while breastfeeding I would read-aloud from the Apologia Exploring Creation: Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day text and then we would read from a novel and maybe do a Bible story reading.  Morning time can be created using an assortment of different books and materials which can focus on Christian Studies, Art appreciation, Music appreciation, Habit training, and even the main subjects such as Language Arts, Math, Science and Social Studies.  You can make morning time what you want it to be but what it is most of all is time to connect as a family during the day to listen and learn together.

I am planning to use Morning Time each school day to gather on the couch to cover 2-3 topics on a looping schedule.  Bogart suggests thinking back to what first brought you to consider homeschooling and what subjects you passionately wanted to share with your children.  I enjoy making art and would like to instill in my girls some knowledge about artists, their paintings and techniques.  I often find that the three R’s get in the way of infusing art into their school week so I’ve added a study of Claude Monet to our morning time loop this fall.  By adding in art and art history, I get to learn and enjoy alongside my girls which can make a big difference in whether I enjoy the homeschooling journey.  I plan on starting with a loop of books/materials for fall Morning Time that will include:

• Art Appreciation: Claude Monet
• Music Appreciation: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Exploring Creation: Swimming Creatures
• Exploring Creation: Land Animals
• Novel read-aloud: Narnia
• Scripture readings.

I want to limit our morning time to only one hour so I will loop our morning time topics so that we do only 2-3 in a given day.  This way it is not written in stone each day what we need to do but that we just carry on from the last day’s loops and cover the rest of the books in a consistent method.  This will alleviate my feelings of ‘being behind’ in my planning.  One of the challenges with homeschool planning is that by planning too far in advance the homeschool parent may feel that life is getting in the way of the plan and making this journey riddled with anxiety about being behind in your teaching or your child(ren)’s learning.  To address this very real homeschooling dilemma Bogart suggests only planning in 3 month chunks so that the homeschool parent can reassess the plan and then decide if something is not working or needs to be swapped in or out of the plan.  The beauty of homeschooling is the flexibility to select materials and curriculum that meet our needs as homeschool parents but also meet the learning and developmental needs of our children.  It is essential that we, as homeschoolers capitalize on this freedom to reinvent the wheel on the fly while at the same time knowing that what we are doing is being effective in meeting our children where they are at.

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