Sat 12 Nov 2005
One of the reasons I do our Morning Time is so that I can fit things in that may get lost in the shuffle. Really I don’t have this system in place to make my life harder but to make it infinitely easier. Over the years I have found ways to make it easier and easier. I am sharing those things on my blog but I wouldn’t want you to misunderstand why I do them.
One of our earliest memorized poems was :
Little drops of water,
Little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean,
And the beauteous land.
Can you guess how often some one in our home says, “Little drops of water….?”
Almost daily. It has even shown up in timed SAT essays.
That is the sort of sentiment that applies to everything I do as a mother.
One of the reasons I love blogging is that my whole life comes in little pats of time. I can write a blog post while waiting for the children to clean-up or finish a test etc. I can read a blog post while my Latin scholars get out their books.
My Morning Time is a way to collect little grains of sand. It should not be a way to complicate life but a way to simplify it.
My parents gave me the gift of personal daily Bible reading. That is probably the most valuable gift I could have ever received from them. As a mother, you will find me on an occasional Saturday morning studying Matthew Henry or reading Keith Mathison, but my true spiritual reserve comes from a lifetime of daily Bible reading, not complicated Bible study.
If you have something that you want your children to assimilate like poetry or scripture or music or Shakespeare, forget the grand schemes, forget what the Konos mom is doing down the street, start giving that thing one or two minutes of your time daily and watch the years roll by.
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Amen…I have found this to be so true. Of all the grand plans I have made in my homeschool career, it is the daily discipline of a few minutes here and there to memorize, read, and review that has paid the biggest dividends. A friend and I meet weekly to give our children some of the fine arts we would probably never get to on our own. In three…four?…years of meeting, we have covered a respectable number of artist, composers, and nature study sessions. At the time, it seems like we are doing very little, but when we look back over what we have accomplished, we feel rich!
Comment by Kathy (November 12, 2005 @ 1:23 pm )
Cindy, do your children enjoy the morning meetings? I love this idea! I can really see how this would help to implement things that would otherwise be put to the side. There are things like this that I want to do. We have been working more on verses and hymns. The children do not usually enjoy this; but, we do it because I think it is important. I know they will be thankful later in life. I would like to find a way to do these things in a mostly enjoyable manner. Of course my children are young (8, 5, 3 and 21 months). But, I want this, like read aloud time, to be a good memory from childhood. Does this make sense? I remember you saying something once, Cindy, about your young boys being active during songs. How much activity or silliness do you allow? Thanks so much for your wonderful ideas and your refreshing honesty! Both have been a real blessing to me!
Also, sometime maybe you can share your Scripture table of contents. : )
Comment by Laura (November 12, 2005 @ 3:52 pm )
Cindy~
“…start giving that thing one or two minutes of your time daily and watch the years roll by”.
I am loving this bit of wisdom, so timely. Sometimes I get these big long grandeous lists and by the end of the day I look and nothing seems to be crossed off, it’s overwhelming. I just need to do what God is showing me to, little by little.
Thank you!
Comment by Roberta (November 12, 2005 @ 4:00 pm )
Laura,
All your questions bring back a flood of memories. My two older boys hold me accountable to keep up the time with the younger children. I can’t say the kids just love MT so much that they can hardly wait. They love certain aspects of it and the reading aloud but our singing is truly terrible and I have forbid grumbling.
Some years we have had some real sillies. I have memories of Nicholas getting the giggles and ruining the whole MT mostly because I would get them too. James reminded me of this the other day. He remembers getting really mad at Timothy, Nicholas and I when we got the giggles; he felt very self-righteous about not giggling. Nicholas has been banned from MT for giggling a few times.
I let the little guys color, draw in nature notebooks or play with cars. I try to engage their attention for the actual memory parts.
We always have lots and lots of interruptions. I just plug away.
I have the scripture ready to go but I didn’t want to overwhelm everyone and use up all my blogging material at once.
The best way to keep things happy is to move along quickly. We only read short bits in all the books except for the final fun read-aloud which usually leaves the children asking for more.
Comment by Cindy (November 12, 2005 @ 4:04 pm )
Thanks for the encouragement.
Comment by Lis (November 13, 2005 @ 11:40 am )
What an inspiring post! Just what I needed to read today.
Comment by Elisabeth (January 23, 2007 @ 9:19 pm )
Thank you so much for this encouragement. It is so needed when those grains of sand are hardly visible right now. I love this idea of morning time. I used to save the “fun stuff” for after math and phonics. Only, I rarely made it that far with all of the distractions in my home. This past week, I have begun implementing a bit of a morning time and have found that it only takes about 30 minutes, and I do feel like I am giving them more of the “feast” that their little minds need.
Comment by Kendra (November 17, 2007 @ 11:29 am )