The Homeschool Morning Gathering

The Morning Gathering Monday -Thursday 8:15 - 9:50

Calendar: Calendar and number awareness activities. Time, ordinal numbers, patterns, temperature, thermometers, graphing, addition and subtraction etc. (Drawn from Saxon Math meeting books) About 10 minutes.

Scriptures and Scripture Memorization: Read and discuss 3 verses (we each read one), one bible story from illustrated stories, and work on memorizing scripture of week and choose 2 old memorized verses to recite. About 15 minutes

Poetry: Work stanza by stanza on memorization. Children repeat, and we say together, incorporating actions and discussing interesting vocabulary and literary techniques. Choose 2 old memorized poems to recite, working on posture, expression, and articulation and to promote long term memory retention. Or read poetry for fun and to find new favorites for memorization. About 15 minutes

Copy Work/Dictation: Use selections from scripture, poetry and literature. (Ideas learned and adapted from Christine Miller’s classical christian homeschooling website, The 3 R's (Ruth Beechik), Teaching the Trivium (the Bluedorns), and The Well Trained Mind (Susan Wise Bauer)). Callista works on a single sentences, new each day and illustrates her work with left over time. Ellery copies the first day, writes from dictation the second day, and memory the third (all using the same passage). About 20 minutes

Building the Nile Delta

History (Monday/Wednesday): History review cards. We make these through the year and draw from an index file to store in long term memory important things we are learning. It is a similar concept to our scripture and poetry reviews (Based on the ideas of Christine Miller). Read aloud a chapter from The Story of the World (Susan Wise Bauer), and other ancient history books from the library. Complete coloring pages, map or timeline work. Practice narration (repeating back as much detail as they can from our reading). About 20 minutes

Flooding the Nile

Math (Tuesday/Thursday): Math activity drawn from Family Math. About 20 minutes.

Emmett reads books, colors, plays cars, and listens to stories. He is actually quiet tired in the mornings and most of the time just loves to snuggle with a blanket, his pacifier, and his bear on the ground near us. Berkeley sleeps and eats :)

Our Friday Morning Gathering

Friday mornings, before our field trips we read, read, read! When we don't have a field trip planned we just keep reading for fun. I try to go the library alone to check out our books. I use literature recommendation from The Well Trained Mind, The Story of the World Activity Book, All Through the Ages History through Literature Guide, and my own findings. Reading out loud with my children is my absolute favorite part of being a mother.