2018-2019 Morning Time Plan PLUS Binders! (Bonus Tea Time Plans)

I've had a few requests to go through our Morning Time plans and our new Morning Time Binders.  The blog is probably the easiest way to do that with the added bonus that I can link to our resources (note that some links are amazon affiliate links).

 Here is my binder and the one that I will walk through here.  Each school age child (I'm teaching four this year!) has their own that is almost the same.  The only difference that I included their poems in their binder, not everyone else's.  My binder has everything for everyone.

The kids' binders are color coordinated, just like everything else around here!  They were also given the freedom to personalize their covers.

 The back covers have our opening prayers (click to enlarge).

The first page is our overall plan.  The numbers are minutes.  Why, yes I did sit down and do a pretend Monday Morning Time and time how long it took to go through each item.  I needed to make sure we could do it all in an hour.  Adding up the minutes equals 66, which is pretty close to an hour and includes lots of margin.

 After that are detailed weekly pages of the plan.  At the bottom of this page is the key to what my abbreviations mean.  

• Hymns - We are learning six hymns taken from Traditional Catholic Livings Year 1 Hymn study.

• Virtue - We use Simply Charlotte Masons Laying Down the Rails for Children plus whatever other resources I find to compliment the study here at home.

• Science - This year we are studying Chemistry using Noeo's Chemistry 2 plus all the resources they recommend.

• Poetry - We are following the poetry schedule laid out by Mother of Divine Grace plus each child will memorize one poem of their choice from the poet they are studying.
• Fritter (Grade 6) - Robert Frost
• Ladybug (Grade 4) - Emily Dickenson
• Sunflower (Grade 2) - Christina Rossetti
• Froggy (Grade K) - AA Milne

• Bible - We are going to work on memorizing six Psalms this year: Psalm 23 (a review), Psalm 34, Psalm 100 (a review), Psalm 139, Psalm 51, Psalm 136.  Some of this was taken from recommendations from Catholic Icing.

• Catechism - We have used the Mother of Divine Grace recommended schedule for memorizing parts of the Baltimore Catechism.  But I have found that keeping up with so many children each memorizing different parts to be impossible.  And now Fritter, as a sixth grader, is supposed to begin memorizing parts of Baltimore Catechism 2.  It's really unsustainable for us at this point to do that.  So instead, we are memorizing the first 14 chapters of BC 1, while still reading and discussing the parts that are recommended for their grade.  So Fritter will still get discussion of chapters from BC2, but will work on continuing to memorize BC1.  Each question and answer part of the chapter was typed out a put into the binders for ease of use.

• Shakespeare/Plutarch - We are continuing to use How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare.  This year we will study and memorize passages from Twelfth Night.  For Plutarch we are using Plutarch for Boys and Girls.  The plan is to study the life of Aristides.  (For more info on studying Plutarch see the section in Ambleside Online.)

• Other Memory - Here we have memory work for History, Geography, and Science.  Some of this comes from various years of recommended work in Mother of Divine Grace and some from Living Memory. (Note: We are not memorizing all of the info on these pages at the same time.  We are just doing the portions where the little Post-It Flag is until we've got it and then we'll move on.  This is all just possibilities.  I put all of these pages here simply so you can see what types of information we may get to.)

• History - We have used Connecting with History for several years and will be doing Volume 3 this year (High Medieval to Early Explorers) along with resources they recommend.

For Tea Time we are alternating Art and Music.

• Art - We are using two different sources here.  For the first interval (six weeks or so) we will be studying Giotto using the Artist Portfolios from Simply Charlotte Mason.  After that we will use Track B of Meet the Masters (we did Track A this year and loved it!)  We are also going to combine a bit of Art and Math in various projects I have devised for my students.
• Music - We will study Bach using the Composer Studies from Simply Charlotte Mason.  If we get through it we may use some of the suggested folk songs from Ambleside's Folk Song Rotation.

There you have it!  We will have one hour, three mornings a week, during breakfast and before Mass to go over the Morning Time material.  Tea Time will be after naps, also three times per week.  The hope is that this becomes the cornerstone of our homeschool day.  My goal is that if something has to be skipped due to....whatever, then we skip something other than this.  Morning Time, Mass, Tea Time.  This is what our homeschool day will turn on.  I need to be reminded of this when October and February hit!  Hopefully this cornerstone keeps burnout for us all at bay.  The focus here is on the good, the true, and the beautiful.  Soul food.

Tell me: are you doing a morning time or a tea time (or both!) with your students?  Do you have favorite resources?  Let us know in the comments!