How We Do Morning Time with a 3rd grade, Kindergartner and Toddler

This year has, without a doubt, been the most successful homeschooling year yet. What’s laughable about that fact is that our life has also never been more full of uncertainty. We are currently living with my parents in a very small, quaint townhome where we have very little space for schooling. 95% of our materials are in storage, and everything has been tapered to down to bare minimum. I think because there’s so much unknown in my life, I’ve clung to the security and consistency of homeschooling, particularly our Morning Time. Morning Time has truly been an anchor for us this year, bringing us together daily to read beautiful books, discuss life-giving ideas and discover poetry, nature study, music, foreign language, art and the Word of God in fresh and exciting ways. It’s a neat thing we’ve got going here, mamas- this homeschooling thing. No matter where we are or what our circumstances look like, we can always cuddle on the couch with a good book, or rightly divide the Word of God to our children over mugs of hot tea and a hot breakfast. There’s something so sweet and safe about that. Anyway, let’s talk about Morning Time.

What is Morning Time?

Morning Time, or “Maranatha Mornings” as we call it in our family, is a way to gather as a family every morning and read fabulous books, sing hymns, pray together, or whatever works best for your family! For the first couple years with very little children, we gathered each morning and read our devotional, practiced some Spanish flash cards and worked on Scripture memory. Then, we would read a couple picture books. As the years have gone by, we’ve exchanged the picture books for chapter books (although we still love picture books!) We’ve added poetry, artist study, composer study, fables, and missionary stories. We’ve also traded in devotionals for my personal ESV Bible- and I read from the OT, NT, Psalms and Proverbs each week, depending on the day. Morning Time is the time slot where you can add those beautiful things that you WANT to be a part of your family culture, but can’t seem to find the time for! And what’s beautiful is that Morning Time only takes about 30 minutes. Here are even more benefits–

Benefits of Morning Time

There are so many benefits, but I’ll try to be succint.

1. It guarantees that you get in the Word of God with your children consistently first thing in the morning.
2. It guarantees that you will implement those “harder to implement” subjects, like foreign language or poetry.
3. If you do it during breakfast, it gives you ample time to teach and read to your children while their mouths are full. They are much less likely to be antsy.
4. It provides a sense of togetherness, that will be so vital as you move up in grades and children start separating for things like math, language arts and history.
5. It encourages discussion. Some of our greatest discussions as a family happen during Morning Time. Just this week, we’ve discussed how Abram showed humility in letting Lot delegate the land. We’ve discussed how John the Baptist called himself “the friend of the bridegroom” and how, like a modern “best man”, John the Baptist celebrated the meeting of the Bridegroom with His Bride, the Church. We’ve talked about baptism, and what it truly represents. Discussing these things organically as they come up during our readings is what leads to things like my 5 year-old saying she is now ready to be baptized! There have been countless moments like this.
6. It gives the siblings things to discuss as they go about their day! For example, my daughters today were acting out The Wind in the Willows, because that’s our family read aloud. I will often walk in on all three of my children building legos or playing with toys while singing our morning Spanish Songs or the hymns we’re learning.
7. It’s quick! We usually finish our Morning Time in around 30 minutes, yet it packs such a big punch in their education!
8. It can be a gentle introduction into lessons for preschoolers and kindergartners. My kindergartner, Lyon, has been making so many strides just through being a part of Morning Time. It’s grown her comprehension skills tremendously, and I’ve found that shes now able to sit through much longer readings and chapters of books because she’s built that stamina during the shorter readings of Morning Time. Morning Time, plus either math or language arts (1 per day) is all that is expected of my kindergartener. But, just think- that means she’s getting literature, poetry, artist study, composer study, fables, missionary stories, the Word of God, Scripture Memory, Spanish PLUS her lessons in under 40 minutes per day.

How We Do It

In our particular homeschool, we do a FEW things every day and MOST things once a week. This is how we get all those subjects mentioned above covered in one week. Also note that Fridays look different, but I’ll be sure to show that.

I’ll explain in a different way in case you’re still making sense of it.

Basically, you just do your daily subjects plus your one weekly subject per day. As I mentioned before, our Fridays look a little different. Here it is fully broken down:

Monday: Old Testament Reading, Hymn, Scripture Memory, Calendar Work, Spanish, Read Aloud

Tuesday: New Testament Reading, Artist/Composer Study, Scripture Memory, Calendar Work, Spanish, Read Aloud

Wednesday: Psalms Reading, Fable, Scripture Memory, Calendar Work, Spanish, Read Aloud

Thursday: Proverbs Reading, Poet Study, Scripture Memory, Calendar Work, Spanish, Read Aloud

Friday: Missionary Story/Biography, Poetry Recitation, Read Aloud

So if you notice, we do some things daily, while “looping” through what we call our “beauty subjects.” As I mentioned before, you could add anything into your family’s morning time. You may be more interested in looping drawing lessons on Mondays, nature-based picture books on Tuesdays, journaling your prayers as a family on Wednesdays, and learning French on Thursdays. You may be reading the Bible book by book instead of the way we do it. You may choose to do your read aloud in the afternoon or even at bedtime. It truly just depends on what YOU care about as a family and also the attention spans of your children. This is a time for expressing your unique family culture!

The Curriculum We Used

This was the first year that we decided to follow a curriculum for our Morning Time. We chose to use A Gentle Feast Cycle 1 Morning Time. I can’t rave about it enough. Everything I spelled out above is detailed in the Morning Time guide. A Gentle Feast’s Morning Time is divided up into Bible, Artist/Composer Study, Hymn Study, Fables, and Poet Study. Each term (12 weeks), the children read through a chunk of the OT, the NT, the Psalms and the Proverbs. They also study a specific poet in depth, reading quite a few of his/her poems, and an in-depth back story of his/her life. Likewise, they learn the music of a specific composer and the works of a specific artist. We also read a fable per week, which leads to discussion about character traits that we want to embody as followers of Jesus. There are a few adjustments and swaps we’ve made to the curriculum. For example, we don’t follow the hymns used in the guide; we do our own hymns. So far, we’ve done “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus and “As the Deer.” I’ve simply chosen hymns that I feel personally connected to, and want to share with my children. We will also be doing “Lord, Prepare Me” soon!

We’ve also exchanged a few of the books; for example, we are going through The Book of Virtues in place of Pilgrim’s Progress, because we’ve already read through Pilgrim’s Progress multiple times. On Fridays, we read martyr and missionary stories. We’ve used two resources: Stories of the Saints and The Story of Jesus’ People. Both have been wonderful, but ultimately, we’ve leaned more towards Stories of the Saints, as the stories are shorter and more to the point. The book leans heavily Catholic, which we are not. But, the stories themselves are able to be read and enjoyed without teaching any specific giving any specific “Catholic advice” if that makes sense. Since we’ve just about finished Stories of the Saints, we will be using Jesus Freaks, Volume 1 for the remainder of the year. These martyr stories are very explicit and extreme, so you may want to pre-read. We’ve been reading martyr stories from the time the children were very little, so it doesn’t affect them. Gratefully, they see that part of following Jesus means the possibility of losing your life. I believe part of my call as their mother is to feed them that paradigm consistently.

We’ve also added Spanish and Calendar Work as an addition to the A Gentle Feast schedule. I know quite a bit of Spanish and have a bit of a knack for making up simple songs, so we’ve just been singing songs daily that have to do with colors, days of the week, introductory conversations, body parts, family members, etc. We also really love this Spanish matching game. For Calendar, we use these Morning Planners for each of the kids. They simply draw a small picture of the weather each day with the high temperature for the day. They also have freedom with their calendars, so they can draw a picture of what our plans are for that day or events coming up! Here is a picture of my 8 year-olds, and a picture of my 5 year-olds.

As you can see, we haven’t done it every SINGLE day, basically because if we have an appointment or a playdate, calendar work is one of the things that gets put to the side. But what we have done has been extremely beneficial. For my kindergartner, it’s improved her sense of time and awareness of days/weeks/months. For my 8 year old, it’s given her a sense of autonomy in recording the things that matter to her and using it more as a planner. As for my toddler, I’ve given him one as well (because he requested it) and he basically just colors in the squares. It’s quite cute though, because he really focuses and attempts to give his best effort. While they are working in their calendars, I read a chapter from our family read-aloud. It seems to be the perfect amount of coloring and drawing to occupy their hands while they listen.

Read Alouds

The very end of our Morning Time is our family read aloud. Sometimes, I give the kids a break before our read-aloud to go brush their teeth (since we just ate breakfast), play for 5 minutes, go potty, etc. Sometimes I make them a cup of hot tea or a glass of milk with a cute straw- something to get them excited for the last thing. As I said earlier, they often work on their calendars during the chapter reading, but sometimes they’ve already finished, and I just pass out something else to do with their hands. We’ve had success with sticker books, coloring books and polymer clay. If my toddler stays, he usually has one of his dinosaurs or a handful of legos to stack. I’ve tried to mix and match my read alouds this year, going back and forth between a chapter book that I know would resonate more with my kindergartner, and one that I know my 3rd grader will love. If I’m reading one that is more directed to my 3rd grader, I understand that my kindergartner and toddler may run off to play. That’s fine with me. We read a chapter per day without fail, even on Fridays. I hardly ever read a second chapter, no matter how much they beg, because it truly promotes anticipation for the next day of reading. So far this year, we’ve read:

• The Wind in the Willows. This version is abridged, which normally I don’t choose for read alouds. In this case, I chose it because it excludes the “Pan” chapter where the characters worship the false god, Pan. That was just a “no” for our family! This book is brilliantly illustrated by Inga Moore, and doesn’t steal from the wonder of the story even though quite a bit is removed. My kindergartner AND 3rd grader have loved this one! It’s also made my toddler bust out laughing in silly moments of the story!
• James Herriot’s Treasury for Children This book has 8 chapters that are 8 different stories, truly delightful for even the youngest of children. James Herriot was a veterinarian in England, and shares the most interesting stories of the farm animals and pets that he served in his practice. Think a dog who only barked once in his life, or a cow that found his way back home from miles away! The kids were so upset when this book ended, especially my kindergartner.
• Winnie the Pooh Need I say more? All the kiddos loved this story, and my kindergartner actually cried when it ended.
• The Princess and the Goblin This was more so for my 3rd grader, so my kindergartner only stayed for a few of the chapters. This fairy tale story parallels so much with the Gospel! It’s a story of a princess, whose father is the King (naturally) but who is in danger of being captured by goblins. In the end, Curdie ( a picture of Jesus) rescues her and takes a right-hand position to the King. The princess’s guide (a picture of the Holy Spirit) is her late grandmother, which no one can see except for her. The goblin parts are quite, quite graphic, but things like that don’t affect my oldest. I definitely pre-read it before reading it to the children, and I would advise the same to make sure the themes are appropriate. There is magic in the book; I allow magic in stories where the Gospel narrative is clear and the “magic” really just represents supernatural power but within the book’s “pretend world”. To each their own.
• Little House in the Big Woods. This one we had to switch to an audiobook, and I’m so glad we did! The audio book had all different voices, sound effects, fiddle playing and more. I’ll be honest- while the family in the story is so endearing and sweet, this book drags on like no other, in my opinion. Although I know such great character traits could be taught through these books, it will be slightly painful for me to pick up another. That being said, most families adore these books! I think I’m the exception. The kids felt the same towards the book, but I’m not sure I showed the most excitement, so that could have contributed.

What we’re planning to read for the remainder of the school year:

• The Far Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
• Brambly Hedge by Jill Barklem
• Poppy by Avi
• The Storm by Cynthia Rylant
• Little Pear by Eleanor Frances Lattimore
• The Complete Beatrix Potter Tales (we’ve read through a few but never the entire thing)

After Morning Time, we usually have a long break, where I get done any morning chores that I didn’t complete earlier that morning, the kids play and complete any chores they didn’t complete, and we all make sure we’re ready for the day. In the warmer months, we take our walk, run or bike ride during this time.

Closing Thoughts

If you’ve wanted to implement a Morning Time routine but haven’t known where to start, I truly hope this inspires you. I’m always looking for new ideas to freshen things up and also make our days run smoother. As a final thought, please never forget to consult the Holy Spirit before adding anything to your homeschool days. We always want Him leading the charge on the education of our children! Bless you, sisters!