Thursday 12 May 2016

May Morning Basket

This May is a complicated month for us. Middle Son is taking some exams and will need to be driven to his exam centre. Obviously, this involves a bit of creativity around his siblings' education! Nature walks are likely to take place in different places and poetry teas may have to be adjourned to coffee shops. Maths and English are a bit more complicated although they will be prioritised in the time that we do have at home.

Our morning time may be a bit of a casualty of this. I plan that the Bible component will continue although possibly at a different venue on some days. The other components may be dropped on days when we aren't at home. It isn't a disaster just a change!

Anyway, for the days when morning time happens as planned, this is the rough outline:

Bible-Daily
  •  Prayer
  •  section from A Child's Story Bible. We are currently reading the New Testament volume.
  •  memory work 
  •  a hymn. 
  • Younger Daughter has finished the under 10s section of the Trinitarian Bible Society memory work and has now devised a scheme for memory work. This involves five Old Testament verses so far from the Psalms and then five New Testament verses. This sounds a very reasonable plan so this is what we are doing. Currently, we are learning some verses from Psalm 103 so we are also singing a metrical version of this. 
Read aloud-Daily
 Later in the year, we would like to visit Beatrix Potter's home, Hill Top, and so we are rereading her stories. As the children are older than when they were first introduced to these, we are looking particularly at the detail in the pictures and the precision of the language. I love reading these books!

Art Appreciation-Weekly.  
Last month, the book 13 Buildings every child should know went down particularly well and we ended up reading it daily until it was finished. This month, we are reading 13 Bridges every child should know. I'm learning from this and it fits in well with a K'nex bridge set that we have been using intermittently. Really, I'm not sure whether this is art appreciation or a STEM activity. It probably doesn't matter!

Music Appreciation-Weekly
We are singing our current hymn to a tune by JS Bach. This fits in well with our reading from the Ladybird Book of Composers. We add a short listening session to this. Today, was Toccata and Fugue in D minor. 
Once we finish the Ladybird book, I am hoping to use the short podcasts from Classics for Kids. Each podcast is about six minutes in length so ideal for this slot and it is easy to play them on my phone.

Maths-daily (this isn't our only maths time but a time for fun maths and a little revision!)
This is where April didn't go so well. We did do some maths games but not daily. I'm hoping that we will be a bit more consistent about this in May.
There is a new podcast on Edsnapshots about maths in Morning Time which has many ideas including living books about maths.

Geography-weekly
Practice capitals of Oceania and look at maps.

I am delighted to have suggestions for our Morning Basket especially around science in this slot.

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7 comments:

  1. As always, I'm so impressed at your energy and creativity. Can't think of anything that would easily fit your morning slot for Science, unless you get a Ladybird book of Famous Scientists :)

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    1. Thank you. I like the idea about the Ladybird book. We tend to use Ladybird books a fair amount.

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    2. Thank you. I like the idea about the Ladybird book. We tend to use Ladybird books a fair amount.

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  2. Its very inspiring to read this post Sarah. Well done to your daughter for completing the TBS Bible memory work. My daughter and I learnt all of Psalm 103 after she had completed the TBS verses and I found it a great blessing personally. We used Joanna Bluedorn's beautifully illustrated book 'Bless the Lord.'

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    1. Thank you, Rachel. The Joanna Bluedorn book is beautiful. Learning the whole Psalm would be lovely. I will have to see what my daughter thinks. She has spent sometime thinking about her memory work scheme and I don't want to dent her idea!

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  3. It sounds like you will still have some nice morning times, even though the venues will be different :-) I noticed today on the British Museum section of Khan Academy that they have resources on Oceania, but I haven't checked to see how suitable they are for younger children. Hope your son's exams go well.

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    1. Hi Gwen, I hadn't realised about that section of the Khan Academy probably because I haven't been on the site for a while. I will have a look-thank you.

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