If you’ve ever fallen down the Pinterest rabbit hole of homeschooling, you have a passing familiarity with the idea of morning time. Maybe you’ve heard it referred to as a morning basket, symposium, or circle time. The underlying concept is the same: begin the day with a gentle routine of reading aloud, singing, prayer, and perhaps recitations.
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We Are Created for Ritual
I don’t mean ritual in the sense of some old, dusty, religious obligation. I mean it in the most vibrant sense possible, as a habit which is life-giving. Our hearts beat over and over, and we don’t dismiss this as unnecessarily boring or old-fashioned. Our nervous system endlessly sends messages, the earth constantly spins, and the sun rises and sets repeatedly. "As long as the earth endures,” Genesis 8:22 says, “seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease."
Morning time’s allure, I think, lies our heart’s longing for familiarity. We are created for rhythms. In parts of the world where the year is divided into quarterly seasons, we are dazzled with spring blossoms, summer heat, autumn colors, and winter chill. For those of us in the subtropics, wet seasons interspersed with not-so-wet seasons. But no matter the climate or hemisphere, with each change of season, there is a welcomed familiarity in the expected pattern. God created nature to run cyclically.
It’s no wonder, then, that we’re drawn to the idea of an intentional habit at the advent of each day. A habit that will settle our hearts, direct our eyes upwards, and set a positive, nurturing tone for the day appeals to us. Even the most spontaneous and free-spirited among us partake in ritual, whether we realize it or not. The necessary and life-sustaining patterns of sleeping, eating, and personal hygiene are a ritual. Circle time constructs a sturdy scaffolding around which to train the wandering vines of our mornings.
So how do you get started with a meaningful homeschool morning time schedule?
Morning Time is Already Built Into Sonlight
While you’re sorting through all those morning time schedules on Pinterest, there’s something already prepared for you in your big blue binder. Most Instructor’s Guides— especially for the ages where you’re still reading aloud to your children—have a section with Scripture passages, singing, and memorization/recitation built right in under the Bible heading.
These first few lines of your Instructor’s Guide are a perfect launching point for morning time, providing beautiful, consistent, and memorable start to your day. For example, over the course of History / Bible / Literature C, your student will
- listen to more than one-hundred and eighty passages of Scripture,
- memorize thirty-six passages,
- and learn to sing a number of them, too.
That’s a pretty incredible result from your short morning time investment!
If you wanted to extend your morning time a little bit longer, the Instructor’s Guide makes it easy. History / Bible / Literature B+C and C levels, for example, also schedule in Geography Songs, and nearly every level includes delightful poetry to read aloud. And of course, there are the wonderful read-aloud books you will enjoy together. In fact, Sonlight even has a specific term for the part of the Instructor’s Guide you can do while snuggled together in the living-room—the Couch™ Subjects.
You may be in a season of life where mornings just don’t happen. Maybe you work a long shift as a nurse or your husband works into the evening and is home late. It’s okay. The point is not the hour on the clock-sleep is integral, too. Rather, the point is to create an intentional habit of togetherness. Just get started!
Make Morning Time a Priority
Getting started is really more than half the battle sometimes, isn’t it? There’s always one more load of laundry to throw in or one more nagging task calling for my attention. My day runs more smoothly when I take a deep breath, sit down, and begin.
You, too? Let’s commit, together, to make morning time a priority. Let’s make it a goal to begin working our way through those first few lines of the Instructor’s Guide. Start by drinking in the Scripture and songs. Later you can incorporate more topics into your morning ritual if you desire.
Before we know it, we’ll be well on our way to finishing the entire school day.
Start your morning time ritual now. Try 3 weeks of any Sonlight Instructor's Guide (preschool through twelfth grade) for free.
