Morning "Coffee"

Well, this Morning "Coffee" with our homeschool is going brilliantly!  I have a cup o' joe and DD has a latte or hot chocolate and DS#3 has a hot chocolate or apple juice.

We start at 9 am, then go over history and literature because they are tied together.  Then we work on Latin.  2 days a week we add Science and Logic.  After group time, they do their individual work with math, vocabulary, writing and any work left over from the group time. 

The morning starts with low energy, moving slow teens, but after a few discussion questions, their energy increases and they are good to go!  Math scores have gotten better and their writing is is more mature. The Morning "Coffee" has given us much more than I ever dreamed!

There is a thing going around the homeschool community that has a Morning Basket - consisting of a devotional, prayer, poetry, etc.

Well, we are more secular in our home with school AND my teens want to be adults (like most teen do).  So, I thought Dad has morning meetings and most everyone brings coffee to the conference room, so why don't we?  It is like a morning-get-the-day-going meeting.  I usually have handouts - ie, weekly schedule, declension sheets, graded papers, etc.

It also keeps us on a schedule.  I am scheduling appointments and my day around this meeting.  Even if I have errands, we just make the meeting short - only doing history and literature, and then I leave to run the errands. 

So far this week, we have met every morning and it is getting easier for me and they are loving the consistency.  They don't know, but I am training them to get up earlier, eat breakfast and have a morning routine.  It is not as early as public schools, but I always hated that they started class at 7:20 am anyway.  9 am is good for all of us.

At this point, I love all our curriculum choices, but science.  It is the most difficult one to do and not because of experiments, it is just finding one that is secular and can be taught at home.  Textbooks are very dry and not made for homeschool, more for someone with a science teaching background.  Homeschool classes in the area do not teach secular science,  so we just have to push through.  Luckily, -D is doing the experiments with them on the weekends.  He lectures a bit, but it is good for them to get used to that!

Today is the first day this week that I am able to stay home the entire day.  DS#2 is coming in from college and I have work to do!  I am hoping to get 2 quilts finished today.