This year I'm homeschooling three kids who are in 6th, 7th, and 11th grades. After doing some reading and listening to some talks given at homeschool conventions I decided to make a few changes to how we do things.
First of all, I've decided to try out something called "Morning Time." I first read about it in "Teaching From Rest" and Cindy Rollins writes a great deal about it on her blog. Basically, the idea of morning time is to set aside a certain amount of time each school day to things you would like to do, but that often get lost in the push to get through all the "core subjects." For example, things like poetry, art and music appreciation, and literature. Cindy Rollins and Sarah Mackenzie both have detailed descriptions of what they do for morning time on their blogs, but it really can be anything you want. Any subjects or activities that you would like to give more time to.
We are just starting out with morning time, and so I may be trying different things. I stole a few ideas from Cindy Rollins, such as reading Shakespeare and doing grammar activities, but I have tried to come up with some ideas of my own as well.
Here is what we are doing for morning time:
Every day: Catechism, memory work (mostly poetry, but also excerpts from speeches or literature)
Once or twice a week: art and music appreciation, geography, history, Shakespeare, literature, grammar.
I've set aside ninety minutes for morning time, although we usually seem to get it done in an hour.
Morning time is something that takes a little getting used to. For years, our school days have followed a basic subject/break/subject/break pattern. So it seems a little odd to jump from one subject to another. I think my son considers it unfair, as though we are breaking some sort of rule. You can't just go from geography to grammar like that! However, as we have keep going with it, we are gradually becoming more comfortable with the pattern, and maybe even learning to enjoy it.
We spend the rest of the morning on math and English. My husband gets home from work around lunchtime. He teaches the kids science and Latin in the afternoon.
Things are a little different with my 11th grader. She is taking classes at a community college this semester. Since her classes take up so much of her time, she and I are only doing school together on Monday morning, where I give her assignments for the week, and on Friday morning, when we go over her work. In addition to her college classes, we are doing European history, life science, and algebra. If all goes well, she'll be finishing her high school math at the college next year.
