I have written about our morning meetings before. Throughout all the changes which have happened over the years, morning meeting is the one thing which has stood the test of time. In fact, at a time when all the older ones are pursuing their own interests and following completely separate paths, the morning meeting has become even more important for bringing us all together each day.
So….
What is in our Morning Meeting Basket this term?
- Bible Study:
We are currently using ‘Who am I?’ the second book in Apologia’s excellent four book set. I read this aloud and we chat about what we have read.
- Read Aloud:
Our main read aloud this term is Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice. Often the girls will take turns reading this. We chose this book because it was written in the time period we are studying and it is also one of the books they need to have studied for IGCSE English Literature.
As T won’t be taking English Lit he asked to be excused to read his own book during the ten minutes the girls read Pride and Prejudice. He is reading ‘The Story of Science’ by Joy Hakim:
- History through the seventeen hundreds:
For this we are using the fourth volume of the Mystery of History. We are not doing so much hands on history at the moment but I still want them to learn their history up until present day. We are casually looking into the 1700’s and this is a pain-free way to do it 🙂
- Ancient Israel:
My son will be finishing his home schooling in two short years. During these two years I will be taking all the older children through the long and complex history of the Holy Lands. I really felt it was important that the children knew where their faith originated. Starting in September T will also be carrying out a fairly in-depth study of the New Testament as a requirement of graduation.
The core curriculum we are using is the Ancient Israel part of Heart of Wisdom ancient history collection:
We have completed our in-depth studies into Abraham last term, and this term we will be looking at God’s Covenant with Israel, using the following resources:
And the following website article:
And lesson:
- Africa Unit Study
I really need to post about some of the work we have done in Africa. Last term we introduced ourselves to this vast continent and focused on learning about its geography. The back bone of our learning is coming from the very excellent and free ‘Exploring Africa’ curriculum:
Last term we completed Unit One:
as well as module six (which is about Africa’s Geography)
This term we will be working our way through Unit Two, from module seven onwards:
As this is an interactive curriculum, the children bring their school kindles to the morning meeting and we all go through the curriculum electronically.
In addition to above curriculum, we are also making use of ‘Africa for Kids’:
I love these books, and I think this is a particularly good one. Last term we read through Part One: The African Continent and this term will slowly work our way through African Habitats, Plants and Animals.
I swap around each day so sometimes I spend a longer time in Africa and leave Israel alone, and the next day pick up Israel and ignore Africa. Over the span of the week we usually cover everything I wish to cover. The morning meeting lasts about an hour, until 1045, after which the older ones go off and work independently on their interest led learning.
I then have a fifteen minute mini morning meeting with the younger two. During this time I want to work my way very slowly through The Story of the World:
We have already covered Ancient Mesopotamia, so we will be focusing on Ancient Egypt, which handily ties in with our African Studies 🙂
So that’s it for morning meeting over the next three weeks. Do you do morning meeting? If so what do you include?
Our morning basket for summer’s looking completely different from other terms….nature study/science supplies (The Private Eye curriculum) and poetry plus handwriting. We’re both pretty excited about doing something else over the next few months!
The Private Eye curriculum? That sounds fascinating!
I don’t persay, we do meet at the kitchen table for a few minutes. We usually read a bit of the bible look into the history or characters, discuss what it teaches us and how to apply it. Then we talk about our day, who’s going to work at what time and then work our school +life around that. Love your list, thank you for sharing it with us 🙂
My pleasure Jen, thank you 🙂
We do morning time, but ours is all of the subjects we do together, memory work, poetry, nature study, bible, read aloud, history, etc. We start with dance time to get us up and moving and go to bible and memory work and whatever else I want to cover that day.
Oh, I want a dance time!! That sounds like so much fun…..
I am starting a morning basket in our upcoming school year. We do have a morning routine that I have used for years though. …but I think our morning basket will be empty while we rap up this year and start getting ready for the next year. We are so close to the finish line for this school year and I need a new beginning!
We don’t take a summer holiday and I am feeling a little bit envious of everyone wrapping up for the summer…. We are doing a ten week writing, spelling and grammar course! yay!!
Funny, I wrote about our Morning Basket, yesterday, too. Ours isn’t as grown up as yours as it is with my younger two aged 7 and 9.
For which age do you think the Apologia books would be most suitable? We are finishing Catherine Vos’s Child’s Story Bible and I have just ordered The Ology to follow on from that but I think that this will only take us up to the end of the year. I was wondering about the Apologia books but wondered if they would be too old.
I know a few people who think they are too easy for the older set but from my experience of simply reading and discussing you get out what you put in. My younger ones delight in the story telling aspect of it, my older ones have definitely learnt important concepts which are portrayed in such a simple way that you wonder if they are learning anything at all. That is until they put what they have learnt into practice. Age wise I think probably nine to eleven, but mine are both younger and older and all five enjoy and get a lot out of each book. HTH!
Thank you. That is really helpful. I ordered The Ology, for when we finish our current book, but that won’t last too long so we will probably use the Apologia series after that.
We kind of sort of pretend to do a morning meeting. Not much of one, but a little bit. Mainly it’s review type stuff.
We’re covering Mystery of History 4 next year, and I’m super excited about it.
MOH 4 is great, very people based. But the lessons are so much longer we often do one lesson over two days.
We are on our last quarter of MOH 3. It is a wonderful history program. We will do four next year. I dislike putting grade levels on books. Sometimes there are some really great “easier” books that get overlooked just because they are labeled with a certain grade. We have found they can be easily worked in with others that may be more difficult.
Finishing in two years. Yikes! How can that be?
I know!! It is so sad 🙁 I shall miss him terribly when he begins to receive his education else where. That said, he is so ready to spread his wings, so I don’t feel nervous about it at all.
We have a smaller version of your morning time- just Bible reading and prayer together, followed by our read aloud, which is Uncle Tom’s Cabin just now. We are just over halfway through MOH 3, as we only do it once a week, but I am interested to hear about MOH 4. Thank you also for the other book recommendations 🙂