Fall 2018 Morning Time Plans

I love planning our Morning Time: brainstorming what to keep and what to change, matching our poetry to one child’s current history studies and our artist to another’s, finding the perfect book (or books) on our shelf. 🙂

Bible and Catechism: I think we’ll actually finish Comforting Hearts, Teaching Minds this term! We will also start memorizing Romans 6 (I’m thinking of going on to memorize 7 and 8 as well, something I did when I was a teenager).

Hymns: Our new Trinity Psalter Hymnals arrived the other day, and I’m looking forward to singing from them in Morning Time! We’ll probably do a mix of AmblesideOnline’s selections and my own this year. The kids need to practice Children of the Heavenly Father, as they’re not familiar with it and are singing it in our co-op choir. But in October, I want to sing At the Name of Jesus, which I loved when we sang it in Sunday School a few weeks ago (also the tune is by Vaughn Williams – see below 😉 ).

French: Morning Time will be a good time to regularly listen to our TalkBox.Mom audio.

Poetry: As Miss A and and Mr. E will be studying 20th century history, we will listen to T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1 or 2 sections a week). A and I will read/listen to some of his other poems as well, and perhaps also read his play Murder in the Cathedral, which my friend Dawn recently reviewed. I’ve decided to have each child recite their own poem this term. Miss A and Mr. E have each chosen a section of Eliot’s poem, and Mr. D chose Shakespeare’s Sonnet 106. I’ll help Mr. L learn Stevenson’s Summer Sun during his one-on-one time.

Music Appreciation: We have one more Bernstein concert to watch from the first DVD set, and then we’ll start the second one. We’ll be listening to the music of Ralph Vaughn Williams this term, probably either during car trips or our Wednesday Keeping time. I’ll introduce him with the relevant Classics for Kids podcast episodes (saving the Christmas/Winter ones for December).

Picture Study: Dürer is our artist this term, as Mr. D is learning about the Renaissance and Reformation – once again we’ll be using the portfolio from Simply Charlotte Mason.

Geography: We were gifted You Are Here by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield several years ago, and it looks like a good one to read in short bites during Morning Time. I’m also excited about the upcoming publication of a new edition of Window on the World, which will help us not only learn about people around the world, but also how to pray for them!

Church History: I’ve had Simonetta Carr’s biography of John Calvin on the shelf for a while now, so we’ll read it together this term. For the sake of schedule sanity, we’ll read the Calvin bio over the first seven weeks, and the brief Dürer one from the SCM portfolio over the next two or three.

Shakespeare: Twelfth Night will be our play for Term 1 and half of Term 2 (more about our Shakespeare plans in this post). I’ll introduce it with the lovely picture book retelling by Bruce Coville and illustrated by Tim Raglin.

Plutarch: We’ll be reading about Julius Caesar this term in anticipation of doing the Shakespeare play later this year. I was happy to see that Anne White has started dividing up the weekly readings into two or three sections. I think reading it in smaller bits several times a week will facilitate greater retention and make it easier to finish a whole “Life” in a term.

Picture Books: I was inspired by a recent Read-Aloud-Revival episode to read picture books with all my kids, not just the little ones. I do this with Christmas books during December, but had never really considered doing it regularly. So I’ve chosen nine lovely picture books – only three are recent purchases, and most I haven’t read yet! Along with the Shakespeare one mentioned above, they are: