This year my family homeschool goal is to foster more family discussions. I’d like to tackle difficult topics with my kids while demonstrating how to view all areas of life through the lens of Scripture. In order to meet this goal, I’m incorporating more group learning, read alouds, morning basket time and some extra “white space” on our calendar to allow more time to be together as a family.
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Since my husband works from home and we homeschool our kids, we already have numerous opportunities to dialogue with our kids. However, here are three ways we plan to be more intentional with the time we have with our children. (Scroll down more to see the curriculum and resources we will be using.)
Morning Basket Time
First, I plan to start each day with morning basket time. We don’t call it morning basket time in our house but it seems to be the trendy way of explaining what we do.
Every morning will start with prayer, catechism questions, and memory verse work. Then, we will cover manners, character traits and discuss current events using a loop schedule.
Here is what our morning basket schedule will look like:
- Every morning:
- Open our day in prayer and then discuss a new aspect of prayer.
- Review previous catechism questions and/or learn a new one.
- Review a few previously learned memory verses and work on our new one for the week.
- Then do one of these activities following this loop schedule:
- Manners
- Manners
- Character Traits
- Character Traits
- Discuss and analyze a current event from a Biblical worldview.
Lunchtime Bible and Logic
Over the years, lunchtime has become the ideal time for me to read Bible stories to my children. It was especially helpful when I had a lot of little ones who were better listeners when their mouths were full of food.
Now lunchtime has become a great time to read the Bible, discuss difficult topics, and answer questions my kids have. This year I am going to add in logic to our daily Bible reading. We will also be working on our books of the Bible.
Here is what our lunchtime lessons will look like:
- Read a Bible story.
- Review books of the Bible.
- Read and discuss one logic lesson.
Evening Family Devotions
A few nights a week, my husband likes to lead our family in devotions. Our family devotions have looked very different over the years. Sometimes we read the Bible and discuss the passage. Other times we have worked our way through various family devotion books. Then there are times when we’ve gathered together to talk about hard things going on in the world or in our own lives.
Sometimes our family devotions last just a few minutes and other nights we find ourselves talking past bedtime. Our goal is to gather as a family and make Christ the center of our study and discussion.
Morning Basket and Bible Time Resources
Here is a look at the resources we will be using for our morning basket time, lunchtime Bible and logic lessons, and our family devotions.
- What Every Child Should Know About Prayer
- Praying the Bible
- Truth and Grace Memory books (for catechism and memory verse work)
- Manners Made Easy for the Family
- September & Co. Character Matters Cards
- Various resources to help answer difficult questions related to current events.
- Abeka Flash-a-Card Bible Stories (Finishing this series up for our Bible time at lunch.)
- The 10 Minute Bible Journey (Starting this once we finish up the Abeka series.)
- The Fallacy Detective (Logic lessons at lunch)
- Various resources, in addition to the Bible, to help with family devotions. (See this blog post for a list of resources.)
Homeschool Curriculum Choices
I’ll also be sharing our homeschool curriculum choices for the 2022-2023 homeschool year over the next few days. I’ll link to them below as they become available.
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