The Homeschooling Morning Ritual
The morning can swallow your time if you don't have a ritual in place especially when you’re homeschooling.
To implement your morning ritual, you’ll need to decide what will get done, at what time, and you need to stay razor focused employing at all time a good dose of discipline.
Decide first what time you will wake up (which also means you need to decide what time you’ll go to sleep). If you need downtime in the morning, and I strongly recommend this, then make sure you wake up at least an hour early.
Two hours would be even better.
Get yourself dressed before your children wake up. Have a cup of coffee. Spend your time doing things that matter to you such reading, exercise, prayer, and meditation. Whatever you decide to do, pencil it in your calendar.
From the time you wake up, whatever you pencil in will become your morning ritual.
You want to follow your morning ritual with what I call the Offspring Ritual.
The Offspring Ritual is when you teach your children have their own morning ritual. They wake up at the same time each morning, brush their teeth, get dressed, put their dirty clothes in the hamper, make their beds, and come in for breakfast at whatever time you designate.
(Eating on a schedule is much easier for the body than random meal times, therefore, having a specific time to eat should be a part of everyone’s morning ritual.)
Which means that while they're getting dressed, you're preparing breakfast.
After breakfast, the children clean up while you get ready to homeschool.
Now the homeschool ritual begins.
First, you should head straight to your homeschool room or designated area and review your plan for the day. (Your homeschool plan should have already been mapped out the night before.)
Get your mind in gear for teaching and ring your school bell!
A school bell gives a nice ring to the school day.
ESSENTIAL OILS
You can also sprinkle your children with oils such as Rosemary for memory, peppermint for focus and energy, or lavender if you need to calm a child down.
The oil ritual offers your children a pleasant sensory memory that they’ll associate with homeschooling.
ESSENTIAL SUBJECTS
A general rule is to teach your most essential subjects first. These are the subjects that if there were an interruption to your day, you could still relax knowing that you’ve taught those subjects.
Think language arts and math.
Give your children breaks every hour to get up and stretch or run around the block or jump on a trampoline. It's not easy for children to sit still for too long, and it's better for their thinking power to get a good dose of oxygen into their brains.
You want to schedule a long lunchtime break when they can eat and then go outside and play for a while.
Let the morning hours be the more intense hours of study, and in the afternoon you can take it easy. Read some history, do a science experiment, read a story out loud.
Let the children have some reading time to read books of their own choice. Let them pursue their hobbies: practice an instrument, do some artwork, or play a sport.
The point is to keep a schedule that you adhere to or the day will slip right past you. If you don’t keep to a schedule, too many times you’ll find that the afternoon has rolled around, and you’ll have barely made it past grammar.
Try to finish homeschooling around the same time each day, so everyone has leisure time before dinner including, and, most importantly, yourself.
With a solid plan in place, you’re more likely to meet your academic goals for your children; without a good plan in place, you’ll be like a boat with no rudder who fails to reach its destination.
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Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20 years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with her unique combination of mentors, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.