Easy Ideas for Your Morning Time Homeschool Loop
Looping has become a popular way to schedule everything from homeschool subjects to household cleaning tasks.
Looping rejects the notion that subjects and tasks should be assigned a specific day of the week. Instead of assigning a day of the week, subjects or tasks are written in list form and completed in order.
Each day you move on to the next item on the list and when you have finished the list, you start over at the top.
All I needed to work out was the learning topics and reading that would occur daily and the ones we could loop. The Plan Your Year Planner had a form for that, so I downloaded it and got to work.
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Morning Time Daily Items
We love our Morning Time. It is how we kick off each school day together.
At the time of writing this, my children are in 7th, 5th, and 3rd grade. I have a 9th grader, but she only watches CNN10 with us before she has to start her school work.
The following items are included in our Morning Time.
Current Events
CNN 10 is typically how we kick off our Morning Time. We watch and discuss current events after this 10-minute broadcast. Every now and then our conversation leads to a rabbit trail that is well worth our Morning Time and we skip everything else.
Geography
We will read from one of our general Geography books and any titles I select for our current continent study.
If I have a Geography activity planned we will complete it before Morning Time ends. This is also a great time to work on our Pin-It Maps on the first day of a new continent study. {Read my Pin-It Map Review}
Read Aloud FictionÂ
My kids are all reading different titles each month for their book clubs, but a few times during the year I would like to pick a historical fiction to read as a family. These titles will probably focus on WWII or our Geography studies. I am going to start with Number the Stars.
Memory Work
I always have BIG plans for memory work but they rarely work out. This year we are just going to try to memorize 1 item each month. I’ll keep adding to this list and select an item each month during the school year:
- Poetry (using this series and whatever we choose)
- Gettysburg Address
- State Capitals
- Presidents in order
- Shakespeare (also part of our loop with this book)
Our Morning Time Homeschool Loop
This is our looping list. We complete 1-2 areas each morning. Sometimes we have such an involved discussion that we only make it through one book or activity.
The next day, we just pick up with the next item on the list.
Check out: Your Morning Basket Guide
I keep the bin of books next to my chair in the main room so it is easy to grab our next selection.
History
My boys asked me to include reading from “The World Wars” again this year. We finished WWI last year and now we are reading about WWII.
SQUILT
We are working through the Modern Era. After I kick off our exploration, we listen to the piece a few other times over the next few days. I ask Alexa to play it during lunch or in the evening when I remember. {SQUILT review post}
Non-Fiction
Right now we are reading essays from “We Were There, Too“. I select essays from time periods that we are familiar with. Each selection is brief and brings alive a time period in history from the point of view of a kid.
Logic Book
We’ll explore logic using the Fallacy Detective. Once we finish, I’d like to move on to Philosophy for Kids.
Game Play
Playing games with my kids happens a lot in this house, but we’ll use morning time to focus on educational games. I’d like to rotate math games, language arts games, and Geography games. Sometimes we might just choose from our favorite card games and favorite board games. {A month of game play on the blog.}
Shakespeare
Our plan is to continue reading this fantastic book and add selections to our own Shakespeare books. We’ll memorize them as we go along. I shared the books we are creating on Facebook Live.
After our Morning Basket Time, the kids will work on their individual activities: spelling, math, and reading. Then we will work on our content areas in the afternoon using another loop.
Have you tried looping? How did it work out?
Related Articles:Happy Planning Your Homeschool Year
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What’s in Our Morning Basket: October
Geography Books for Your Morning Basket
SQUILT: Music Appreciation Review
She believes that creativity, laughter, and fun are the backbone for engaging and inspiring homeschools. You can find her encouragement and tips on this blog, Mary Hanna Wilson.
She is an enneagram 7 and an extrovert. She enjoys traveling, tea (iced or hot), good conversations, and books. You can connect with her on Instagram and Facebook.
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When you get to memorizing presidents, I highly recommend this wacky book we came across by accident: “Yo, Millard Fillmore!” I had preschool through second grade last year, and they all memorized them with this book. It’s one big long mnemonic device that really works. Even I memorized them, and having never memorized anything when I was in school, I thought there was no hope for me.
Thanks Lise. I am going to check my library now!
By the way, I’m reading this just before heading out to a performance of “Twelfth Night” with my daughter. I wanted to let you know that I am using your Target blank-books idea for each Shakespeare play. We were already using “How to Teach…,” and this was the perfect way for us to organize it. We’re pasting in program covers and ticket stubs as we see the plays, too.
That is SUCH a great idea! I love it. I might steal it back and put in memories like that as well.
Great post! I was wondering how much time do you spend on your morning time each day?
Good question. It varies each day, but probably averages 60 minutes. Sometimes it is less if I am losing them. Other times it is more if we are really going. It is rarely over 90.
I enjoyed the ideas in your Facebook Live video. I also love Ken Ludwig’s book! I am wondering how you find videos of famous performances of passages. Do you just search on YouTube?
I do search YouTube and preview them at night. There is a lot out there 🙂
Mary,
I just love how honest and resourceful you are! I basically copy everything you do. You are a rockstar. Hugs, Deanna
Deanna, You are too kind. 🙂 Mary
Would love to know where you got those lovely large maps of the continents! Those are fantastic.
They are Pin-it maps. There is a link to them in the post 🙂 -Mary
I taught my children the Presidents in order by setting it to the tune “One Little, Two Little, Three Little Indians”. They learned them quickly, and so did I! We used the CD from “Sing ‘n Learn” to learn the state capitals. We are in the car so much that it helped us to put the CD in every time we went somewhere. It didn’t take long until all three children had them memorized. If they can sing it, they’ll remember it!
Absolutely!
Another great one! Thank you! My interest has been peaked about looping other life tasks… Is this something you do? If it is I would love to see another post on how that is interwoven onto your days!
I am afraid that I am just not that organized, but it is a great idea!