Morning Time

Have you heard of it? The Morning Basket? Its this beautiful concept of an organic one room school house type feel when all the children cuddle up with mom after breakfast and read aloud beautiful literature and recite memory work and do other lofty #homeschoolgoals type things.

I tried this 4 years ago and it fell flat. It left us with no sweet memories or aspirations to be duplicated. There were no children asking for "just one more story", and no impressive recitation hanging in the air. Only tears. 

Fast forward to last Thursday and I told the kids to do Morning Jobs (get dressed, brush teeth, make bed, brush hair, pick up room) a little quicker because we were going out to the Lake for the day. The two older kids face fell and they chimed in unison, "but what about Morning Time?" and Violet added her sorrow for not hearing the next of Aesop's Fables. So how did that happen?! How did we go from sitting in the Living Room being a dreaded time, to now, their favorite?

I don't know!

HA! Thats kind of anti climactic and less than encouraging, right? But I don't have a formula for you. Part of me thinks it just has to do with general homeschool prayers I've had for a while now, and part of me things it has to do with no one being in diapers...but it could also be due to persistence and flexibility. I CANNOT proudly say I willingly adorned these traits patiently until we birthed a sweet story time, but I never completely let go of the idea. Although we changed Morning Basket to Morning Time and tweaked it a lot, adapting it to our wants and needs, I tried to never let the kids lose hold of my main goal: following instructions.

So, over the past years, sometimes the two littlest kids played downstairs while we did memory work and read a story, sometimes it was before breakfast before people got squirmy. It ALWAYS has include manipulatives like blocks, or coming dolls hair, or legos, or drawing while they listen. Sometimes it was only 20 minutes and sometimes 90. 

But for now, we have a Morning Time and its our Sweetest Time of all!