Morning Time for All Ages

 

Morning time is traditionally thought of as a learning time for young learners.  Last summer, I realized that we do have morning time – complete with a basket for our resources and everything – even though my children’s ages are all across typical school range (16 years old down to 7 years old).  I didn’t call it that, of course.  The teenagers would revolt, even the middlers would.  But, we were doing it, mostly.  I just needed to come up with a better name and let the older children have a say in some of what we studied, then they would be more agreeable.  Morning Time for All Ages is really possible.

Morning time is our together learning time that mostly happens in the morning, though sometimes it might be afternoon, or even both in the morning and afternoon.  Morning Learning Time is what I proposed to my teen girls.  They thought it was okay, better than morning time, but still not quite cool enough.  We tried calling it MLT, and that stuck for a few weeks.  My only problem (besides our tendency for that together learning time to not always occur in the morning) was that it made me think of Princess Bride.  Do you know the part I’m thinking of?  MLT = mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich

This then led us to Lettuce Time.  Lettuce Time or Let Us (gather together and) Learn Time, as the youngest thinks we mean, is in the early part of the day.  On days when we are really on-top of things, we also have a together learning time in the afternoon that we call Tea Time.  We almost always have tea — at least I do.  Some of my children prefer coffee.  I love them anyway.

It’s funny how once we had a name everything else fell into place.  Remember, we have been doing some form of this all along.  Giving it an official name, making some plans and being quasi-prepared made it a success, and much more well-received by my children.

Over the course of five days (next week) I’ll be posting specific things we do to make this morning time work with all ages.  I’ll share what topics and subjects we cover, how we schedule, how we keep track of what we hope to do (and what we actually do), and resources we have been using.  I’ll link each day here as it goes live, be sure to come back so you can see how easy it can be to do Morning Time for All Ages. I’ll be linking up with other members of the Homeschool Review Crew for a blog hop. We’ll all be sharing about something relevant to homeschooling. Don’t miss it!