Morning Time for Beginners (and free printable binder covers)

What is Morning Time in a homeschool?

Morning Time is a specific time set within the homeschool hours of the day to focus on beauty subjects that otherwise might be pushed to the back burner. These are the subjects that cultivate virtue and wonder.

Morning Time subjects can include:

Bible Study, Devotionals and Scripture Memory
Hymns and Folk Songs
Poetry and Nursery Rhymes
Artist Study
Composer Study
Read Alouds from Exceptional Literature such as:
- Classic Literature
- Fairytales, Myths and Fables
- Shakespeare
- Plutarch’s Lives

Morning Time can include any or all of these subjects. What matters is that your family is focusing on subjects that educate on the ideas of truth, goodness and beauty.

The idea of Morning Time came from Cindy Rollins. She is a veteran homeschool mother of multiple children who was searching for a way to make her homeschool hours more meaningful.

She talks about Morning Time in great detail in her book, Morning Time: A Liturgy of Love.

Cindy Rollins is also the host of The New Mason Jar Podcast, a podcast for Charlotte Mason homeschoolers.

How to Start a Morning Time in your Homeschool

There aren’t set rules for Morning Time. You can make the idea entirely your own.

Charlotte Mason homeschoolers often refer to this dedicated focus as Morning Time because the practice has become so popular by that term.

They also often do these subjects first thing in the morning to make them a priority in their homeschool schedule. These are subjects the entire family can gather together and enjoy as a group no matter the age or grade of the homeschool student.

3 Steps to Incorporate Morning Time into Your Homeschool:

Step one: Name the Practice

You don’t have to call the practice “morning time” if that doesn’t sound quite right for your family. The idea of morning time is far more significant than the name itself.

Most Charlotte Mason homeschoolers use the term Morning Time out of familiarity and popularity of the practice.

Classical homeschoolers call the same idea, Symposium. I have also heard it simply called Beauty Subjects or referred to by the ideals they focus on: Truth, Goodness and Beauty.

Ultimately, it’s up to your family to decide what name is best for you. Naming the practice helps you become more disciplined in making it happen.

Step two: Choose Your Subjects

There are so many different things your family can include in your morning time. But you don’t have to cram in every single subject, every single day. In fact, that sounds incredibly overwhelming and hard to maintain overtime.

Prioritize at least three subjects to focus on at a time.

Here, again, is the list of possible Morning Time studies:

Bible Study, Devotionals and Scripture Memory

Hymns and Folk Songs
Poetry and Nursery Rhymes
Artist Study
Composer Study
Read Alouds from Exceptional Literature such as:
- Classic Literature
- Fairytales, Myths and Fables
- Shakespeare
- Plutarch’s Lives

Morning time is what you make it. Choose the subjects that matter to you and to your children and let go of anything that doesn’t feel necessary or like a good fit.

Step three: Schedule Morning Time into Your Homeschool Schedule

When will your family gather for Morning Time in your homeschool? And, no, it does not have to be in the literal morning.

Options for scheduling morning time include:

At the breakfast table while your children eat
Right after breakfast before beginning daily or independent lessons
During an afternoon teatime
One a day week entirely dedicated to beauty subjects
One day a week at a co-op
One beauty subject for each day of the homeschool week on a loop schedule

You can use one of these methods or a combination. Be adaptable for what is working easily for your family. This should be an enjoyable part of homeschooling and not something that causes you stress or pressure to “get it done”.

How We Personally Experience Morning Time in Our Homeschool

At the time of this post, I have a six-year-old, a three-year-old and a one-year-old. I like the term “Morning Time” for my younger students. But as they age in our homeschool, I will likely switch to calling it “Symposium” to meet their maturity level.

For Morning Time, we currently do Bible, Poetry & Nursery Rhymes, Literature. Hymn & Folk Songs, and Artist and Composer Study. But we don’t do all of these every single day.

Bible, Poetry & Literature

Every morning, at the breakfast table while my children are eating, I read one Bible Story, one poem or nursery rhyme and one “virtuous” short story. That could be a fairy tale, a myth or a fable.

For hymns, folk songs, artist and composer study, we are following along with the Ambleside Online schedule for all of these subjects.

Hymns and Folk Songs

After breakfast, I play our hymn and folk song for the month along with a playlist of other favorites. While they play, sing and listen, I clean up breakfast and prep the homeschool materials for the day. The folksandhymns YouTube channel is where I find a performance of the songs for the month.

Composer Study

On Tuesdays we do Composer Study after our daily lessons of reading, writing and math. I like to begin and end our homeschool day with something lovely.

For Composer Study, we are currently reading picture books about Beethoven from our local library. I’ll read one book I can find about him every Tuesday.

As my children get older, we’ll switch to biographies and read one or two chapters at a time.

I play one of the composer’s pieces every day in the background during my children’s indoor free play and art time.

I will name the piece to my oldest daughter so she can recognize it. Once she can name a particular piece by hearing it, I will start playing a new one by the same composer until she can recognize it.

Artist Study

On Thursdays, we do Artist Study after our daily lessons. I keep the artist’s works for the term in our “Truth, Goodness and Beauty” binder.

I will include a free printable of the covers I use for this binder at the bottom of this blog post if you are interested.

We will look at one of the artist’s works each week and follow Charlotte Mason’s method of Picture Study which she outlines in her book, Home Education.

My daughter will make her own copy of the art and learn the name of the piece.

And that’s how we are currently using Morning Time in our homeschool!

Truth, Beauty and Goodness Binder (Free Printable)

I made a Morning Time binder to store some of our materials for beauty subjects all in one place.

I like to keep printed copies of scripture and poems we want to memorize, lyrics to our hymn and folk songs, any printable materials I can find for our composer study and the artist’s work for our artist study.

The binder includes one binder cover and five section covers:

Scripture Memory
Hymns and Folk Songs
Poetry
Composer Study
Artist Study

I separate these sections with a clear divider so you can see the cover as you flip to each section.

I store the artist’s work in sheet protectors in the back of the binder.

Download the Morning Time Binder Printables here:

Download

Dear Homeschool Mama,

I pray that you found this blog post helpful. Morning Time is such a precious part of our homeschool day and is truly the foundation of our love of learning.

Happy homeschooling!

Humbly,

Haley

. . .

Follow along on YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest

for more homeschool, poetry and bookish content.