Morning Time in Our RV

Happy first day of school everyone! If you’re all done with school in your household, happy random Monday in the middle of August to you! If you already started school or haven’t started yet, consider this wish belated or early!

Today was the perfect time to add “morning time” back into our daily homeschool/road-school routine. I got the idea to do morning time from a lecture by Pam Barnhill at The Great Homeschool Convention in Ontario, CA (2018). As Ms. Barnhill says,

Quite simply, Morning Time contains subjects that the family can do together that emphasize truth, goodness, and beauty in their homeschool.

For more information about morning time visit, Pam Barnhill’s Website.

I recently purchased an adorable watermelon tote bag at Old Navy to stow our morning time supplies in. Ms. Barnhill recommends storing morning time things in a basket or bin. We have been forced into a minimalist lifestyle so the tote is perfect for us right now. Plus, it’s so cute! Full disclosure, it’s possible that I might have re-started doing morning time just so I could justify buying the bag to store the goodies in.

Ideally, here’s how morning time works for us in our 35-ft Winnebago:

To start our morning time, I look up a song to learn on YouTube. The kids like listening to K-LOVE so I usually choose a song from a contemporary Christian artist. We use either the official music video or a version with the song lyrics displayed in time with the music. This week we’re learning Native Tongue by Switchfoot. (I don’t recommend the official music video for this particular song. I think it’s kinda creepy.) Next week we will learn Amazing Grace. This is my attention grabber activity. When I start playing a music video on my phone all the kiddos stop whatever it is they are doing to come watch and sing along.

Next is a short, simple morning prayer like this: Dear Jesus, Thank you for this new day you’ve given us please help us make the most of it and show your love to others. Please help [insert kiddos names] be kind to each other and be good listeners for mommy and daddy. Please help mommy and daddy be patient. We love you Jesus. Amen”

After prayer I read our book of the week. This is usually a “Five in a Row” book, but not always. This week we’re reading This Is My Home, This Is My School by Jonathan Bean (not a Five in a Row book). On Fridays, we’ll use this book to write a book report. As an incentive, 4 book reports earns a family movie night.

When I finish reading the story each kiddo picks a discussion question out of a container. I didn’t come up with the discussion questions myself, I don’t remember where I found them all. They came from a variety of sources via Google searches. I printed the questions on colored card stock and cut them apart. The discussion questions are my favorite part of morning time.

book-discussion-questions.docx

I store our question strips in an empty Talenti Gelato container. I really like Talenti Gelato because, not only is it a delicious treat, you can reuse the containers to store all sorts of things!

Next up is an activity from a rotating list: math flash cards, Mad Libs, or a chapter from Word Fun by Michael Dahl and Nancy Lorien. We only do one of these activities per day. The next day we do a different activity and rotate through them.

We finish up our morning time by saying the weekly Memory Verse and doing morning exercises with this YouTube video, 4 Minute Exercise.

We hope that this post inspires you to add “morning time” or “evening time” with your family into your school routine this year! Be creative and do what makes sense for your family and lifestyle.

☀️ What does your “morning time” or “evening time” tradition look like?

We can hardly wait to hear from you in the comments below.