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My homeschool philosophy is mostly a mixture of classical and Charlotte Mason, and part of both of those philosophies is exposing our children’s minds to the good and the beautiful. Classical art and music is to be explored by the young child so they have mental pegs to hang later study upon. I completely agree with this, and I had grandiose visions of my kids enjoying Mozart while doing their own version of Monet’s Water Lilies. Yeah, it hasn’t exactly played out that way. No matter how hard I tried, I could never fit the arts into our curriculum. I remember buying an Usborne book that I was so excited about. It taught kids about a famous artist, then had them imitate their style. It was a disaster. My boys, who aren’t into art, would just make a big, ugly mess and yell, “done!” Meanwhile, their little artist sister would work for an hour on a painstaking first grade version of cubism, which meant we never got to math or phonics that day. I spent tons of money on supplies that I wasn’t even sure how to use, made a big mess, and stressed out myself and the kids. Music appreciation didn’t go much better. Both subjects ended up being done only sporadically. There had to be a better way, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Then, I went to an amazing session at a homeschool conference done by Sonya Shaffer of Simply Charlotte Mason. She showed us how to do scripture verse memorization, art appreciation, poetry appreciation, music appreciation, AND hymn study without taking up a huge amount of time. Thus, “morning school” was born in our house. Go check out their website in the link below to find the resources that make up the backbone of our morning school. It’s a fantastic website that also has videos and blog posts to help you with a variety of homeschool issues.
So here’s how our morning school works. As we sit at the breakfast table, I read a morning devotional to the kids. I have used various kids' devotional books and children’s Bibles over the years. Here are some of my favorites:
I end the devotional by leading them in prayer, Then, we go over our Bible memory verses. It takes just minutes, I promise you! Here’s Sonya Shafer explaining her Bible memory system - it’s so easy:
After that, we do our poetry, art, or music appreciation for the day. We don’t do all of them every day of course! Here’s our schedule:
For art appreciation, we use Simply Charlotte Mason’s picture study portfolios. I can’t rave about these enough! Each portfolio contains eight gorgeous, glossy 8x10 reproductions of paintings by a particular artist. We have done Van Gogh, Monet, Homer, and several others. There is also a short biography of the artist included and questions to ask your children as they look at the pictures. The key again is enjoyment, not a quiz or deep study. My kids love them and actually argue over who gets to look at them first! The teacher guide recommends choosing only six of the paintings to study, but I have such a hard time choosing, we just do all eight. After we’ve studied the picture and talked about it, I hang it on the bulletin board of our school room to enjoy all week long. For music study, I’ve used several different resources, but right now we are using the Meet the Great Composers series. I do NOT have the kids do the worksheets. I just read about the composer, then we listen to the selection on the accompanying CD. Again, it takes only about five minutes. Below you’ll find links to other resources we have used.
On Thursday, we do hymn study. We go to a church that worships with only contemporary music, and while I love our worship, it was a bit sad to me that my kids weren’t being exposed to the classic hymns I grew up singing in my little country church. Not only that, the stories behind many of these hymns are really inspiring! However, if hymns aren’t something of value to you, choose something else musical for Thursday. Broadway, movie scores, jazz, rock and roll - the possibilities are endless! If you do want to study classic hymns, these books are the best I’ve used (there are three volumes total):
I don’t do all of the hymns in these books. I choose the ones I am familiar with from my childhood and that I can find decent versions of on YouTube. Yep, I said YouTube. I have learned from personal experience: don’t search for a hymn on the spot! Search ahead of time, and save a version you think your kids will enjoy to a playlist. I’ve found versions of hymns by contemporary singers and bands that my kids recognize like The Newsboys, Chris Tomlin, For King and Coutnry, etc. I don’t want them to hear the hymn and hate it! Therefore, I avoid the big choir versions. All I do is read the brief one page history of the hymn from Then Sings My Soul, then we listen to the hymn. That’s it. To increase their exposure to both the classical music and the hymns, we also listen to them in the car on the way to co-op (it’s a forty minute drive). I call it “car school” and my kids love it. Okay, they don’t. They actually whine every single time and beg to listen to the radio instead. Oh well, our kids won’t always love school, right? Finally, Friday is “Stuff They Left Behind.” This is the name of another series of study portfolios from Simply Charlotte Mason. These are just as amazing as the art portfolios. For each historical period (Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Middle Ages, Early Modern, and Modern), you get sixteen, glossy, 8x10 photographs of artifacts, architecture, or feats of engineering from that time period. Also included is a teacher guide with a bit of background information and discussion questions. For example, Ancient Egypt has a photo of the pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx, King Tut’s burial mask, and several others; Modern times has a photo of the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, a Faberge egg, and more. Again, my kids find these really fascinating and fight over them. Once we’ve studied the photo, I hang it up in the school room next to the painting of the week. So that’s it, that’s our morning school. It probably took you longer to read this than it does to actually do it - I’m not kidding, it’s that simple. The only prep time I do is writing our Bible verse of the week on an index card and finding the hymn on YouTube. The rest is just open and go. It’s really the easiest way I’ve found to expose our kids to the great artistic masterpieces of the ages!
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AuthorHi, I'm Melanie! I'm a homeschooling mom of three kids ages 13, 11, and 9. I have a BS in English Secondary Education from Asbury University plus 30 hours of gifted certification course work. I've taught in just about every situation you can imagine. Public school, private, homeschool hybrid, and private tutoring. The most important thing I've learned? One on one, individualized instruction can't be beat. Archives
July 2022
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