Morning Time Revisited

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This new home education year has a lot of novelty for us, which is exciting as it is also my 19th year of homeschooling!! The biggest change is that I will not always be home and that my schedule is somewhat all over the place. Therefore I have had to streamline as well as reinforce the core of our home education: Morning Time. It has always been our favorite time of day and the one that everyone gathers together for. It has always been a family affair from the baby to the high schooler. 

Foundation of our day

Morning Time is the cornerstone of our day and the one thing that we will get to, no matter what, Monday through Friday. It is a relaxed time where we all gather together in the living room and spend time together learning and discussing. Morning Time has grown into a tradition. Our days start so much better with this time of community and fellowship together. Breakfast is a chaotic affair with different people eating at different times and a lot of coming and going with farm chores. It does not allow for an opportunity to start the day well as a family. Morning Time is the time when chaos has been put away, chores are done and we are ready to spend some relaxed time together.

Prayer

We first and foremost anchor our day through prayer. Most days we will pray a Rosary, and on a hurried day, a Divine Mercy Chapelet. Why is it that I always feel like we are cheating when we do that, lol? Must be Catholic guilt… After praying together and offering our day to the Lord, we read about the life of the saint of the day from this wonderful little book:  Lives of the Saints by  Reverend Hugo Hoever, S.O. Cist. If it is a feast day or a Solemnity we will pull out a picture book and spend more time with that saint. Until now we have followed this with family catechesis, but this year the older girls will be studying catechesis on their own and come to me with questions. We are trying it and we will see how it goes.

A Daily Picture Book

Well, what can I say, that is the best part of our day! As I have always been inclined to follow a Charlotte Mason approach to our home education, A Daily Picture Book stemmed from a past need to streamline our Morning Time. I could never find the time or the right way to ensure that art, music, nature study, myths, fairy tales, tall tales, poetry and Shakespeare were included in our Morning Time. It was just too much material to cover, too many topics to research. I always felt overwhelmed by so many wonderful things to include. So much so that I, most often, ended up dropping them out of our day altogether. There was never enough time to get to them all and it was discouraging. But with A Daily Picture Book, this changed.

How A Daily Picture Book changed our Morning Time

Finding a picture book to highlight an event or a person, based on their birthday or anniversary,  created an easy way to consolidate all of the beautiful topics that Charlotte Mason recommends covering under one umbrella. With the daily picture book we regularly encounter artists, musicians and composers as well as poets. But we also explore the lives of scientists, historical figures, explorers, athletes and everyday people who have made a difference in the world.

A Daily Picture Book has allowed for an unhurried and memorable exploration of  a wide variety of subjects and people. It has encouraged us to connect more deeply with Emily Dickinson and her poetry, for example. If we had just read a boring encyclopedia biography and studied a few of her poems, she might not have found a place in our hearts and minds. But with a picture book biography, by the time we picked up some of her poems, we felt as if we knew her intimately. Her poems became the gift of a friend, the sharing of a soul that we knew and understood. It changed everything.

Connecting vs hearing about

With picture books our ability to connect with the subject of the book is so much greater than with a textbook or an encyclopedia entry. A picture book allows us to enter into a new world, the world of our subject. It engages our senses. The pictures, if it is a well chosen picture book, will allow us to see this new world. To really be in it. The story will be well written, the words carefully chosen. Did you know that a picture book could only contain, at the very most, 2000 words? Therefore the author has to choose his words carefully to convey his story. That is one of the things that I love about picture books: the beautiful language used.

A picture book helps us connect with the subject, not just scan it. Once we connect with the subject, we have a desire to get to know more: to read his work, to see her paintings, to explore insects, to look at the moon differently. With a connection, wonder is awakened.

Awakening wonder

Wonder is one of the most incredible motivators. It will ignite our desire to explore new things, to go down rabbit trails, to get out of our comfort zone. We have all seen a toddler discovering pill bugs for the first time. If we leave him alone, he can literally spend hours watching the pill bug. The questions will flow, about everything regarding this new phenomenon. Try adding a picture like A Pill Bug’s Life by John Himmelman and you have ignited the love of entomology for your toddler. And the best part? It works just as well the other way around!

My 11 year old daughter has developed a love of baking after reading Fannie in the Kitchen: The Whole Story from Soup to Nuts of How Fannie Farmer Invented Recipes with Precise Measurements by Deborah Hopkinson, illustrated by Nancy Carpenter. It ignited in her a wonder that you can have different results with the same ingredients or quantity of ingredients that you use in a recipe. She wanted to explore recipes and now she bakes almost daily! Not the best for mom’s figure, but heck, the potential for her life is endless through this one passion. Would it have happened without the picture book? Maybe. But probably not as quickly or as ardently as she had no example at home (I am not a baker).

Wonder in Morning Time

Starting the day with stars in our eyes and a desire to learn something new has been a wonder-full way to ignite our days. Not all picture books will trigger a rabbit trail or a new love, but so many of them do! It has been a great adventure, and I am so very much looking forward to all the new encounters that this year has in store for us!

Brand new monthly Daily Picture booklists are coming out today! No repeat from last year, no duplicate. Finding all these new picture books is always a bit of a treasure hunt, leaving me amazed at the bounty. I can’t wait for our new Morning Time to keep being this great umbrella of culture, history and discovery that we look forward to daily.  Will you join us for another wonder igniting month at A Daily Picture Book, where wonder is only a picture book away?
Love,
Mattie