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Symposium: Our Morning Time

I have to admit, when I was researching homeschooling and I saw "morning time"... my eyes just skipped over that part. For me, morning time brought back the year I taught preschool.  Sitting in a circle, reading a story, talking about the letter of the day... A lovely tradition, but for small children.  I don't have small children...  I am only homeschooling one child and she is almost 13 years old.

When we first started homeschooling two years we tried morning devotions.  I was somewhat enthusiastic, after all, I had been up for a couple of hours getting my older kids off to high school and was on my second cup of coffee.  My "not-a-morning-person" daughter however, was not ready for this and the practice was quickly burried.

Fast forward 2 years.  The high schoolers have graduated and now it is just the two of us "not-morning-people".  I am refining our homeschool plan as we are fully into middle school, I now have a smart phone (which I didn't need but I am very grateful for) and I have discovered podcasts!  I have burned through Center for Lit, Schole Sisters, Read Aloud Revival, Homeschool Snapshots, IEW, and Circe.  And finally, when there was "nothing" else to listen to (and I still had to drive to work) I tried  "Your Morning Basket"
Not because I wanted a morning time, nope... it was because I needed something to listen to while I was stuck in summer construction traffic on the way to my part time job.  I thought I might find out what I should have done if I had started homeschooling my daughter at a younger age (like I didn't already have regrets about that!!).

I was wrong.

There. I said it.  I was wrong.

I need a morning time; my daughter needs a morning time.  AND guess what!?! It doesn't have to happen in the morning!  Yeah, you read that correctly, it doesn't have to happen in the morning.  What we needed was a time to connect with each other, with the truth, goodnes and beauty for our homeschool.


Our Symposium Plan:

  • Latin: memorization and vocabulary practice
  • Poetry: Memorization (this one will be tricky as my daughter has stated that she hates poetry, stay tuned)We will be doing the Mensa for Kids List.  I hope to get 6 poems under our belt this year and 6 next year.
  • Read Aloud: Hoping to cover some Science and History here.
  • Scripture: Memory Verses from Community Bible Study (she will be in the teen class and I will be in an adult discussion group, but our Bible passages and the teaching will be the same)
  • Art: Sister Wendy will be helping us here!  My library has many of her books and we love her.
  • Homer: Padraic Colum's Children's Homer
  • Hymn: Starting with And Can it Be; using YouTube
I am not sure if we will do everything every day and I will not start with everything.  But this is the plan.
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