Morning Meetings

Recently, Sarah Denley did a post about their "Morning Meeting" routine, and it reminded me that I needed to blog about our routine, too! Since this is our first little toe dip into homeschooling, I definitely want to record this ;)

A while back, we went to a workshop at Aubrey's new school, and it was all about how to remain productive during the summer months. They said the summer should be a time of "lazy growth." In other words, you won't be doing hardcore school during the summer, but you don't just want to quit completely and loose ground either. So, they recommended having a Morning Meeting everyday (or as often as possible). Of course you tailor this to your child's age, and the length of the meeting depends on your child's age and the number of children in your family. They recommended spending about 10-30 minutes doing your Morning Meeting.

David and I picked a few things to work on with Aubrey this summer, and I think the Morning Meetings have gone really well! I'll be honest and say that they haven't happened everyday, but I knew that would be the case. Some mornings it's just not practical to have a Morning Meeting, like on Tuesdays when we're rushing to get out the door for Bible Study. Aubrey has been good about reminding me to do "school" when I forget -- it's cute :)

As far as what we're working on this summer, here is our Morning Meeting schedule:

•  We open with song. 
• Catechism (David works with Aubrey on her Catechism at night, so we actually don't do this during our Morning Meeting.)
• Days of the week and months. 
• Counting, number flashcards, and letters (The letters are just review since she already knows them. The numbers she is learning, and we are working on being able to count higher.)
• The Lord's Prayer
• Our address and family member's birthdays
• Tracing and Cutting
• We close with song (She's learned the Gloria Patri)

We don't work on all of that everyday. We change it up, and I just go through some of those things each time. We have really been focusing on the Lord's Prayer, and she has just about the whole thing memorized. Her favorite thing is the tracing. We use this book:

We got this thing that you slip the pages of the book into (I'm sure it has a technical name, but I don't know what it is), and she traces with dry erase markers, so that way way we can practice over and over and reuse the pages. She just really enjoys that. We also have a cutting book that is similar to the tracing one, but we haven't done that much. Mostly because it requires my full attention when Aubrey is working with scissors, and I'm usually holding Alaina and watching Jude during all of this. We'll focus more on the cutting during the school year.

So far, I've really enjoyed our Morning Meetings! I realize all of the stuff we're working on is very basic, but it's fun to be teaching my child new things and watching her learn. It's amazing to me how easily children memorize things at this age. I'm always shocked at what she remembers from day to day. This has given me a little bit of confidence that I CAN teach my child, and it CAN be an enjoyable experience for both of us. I'd say our first summer of homeschooling has been a success :)