Morning Symposium; Gotta Have It

I wrote several weeks ago about how we were going to instill a Morning Symposium into our day. Are we doing it? Yes. Are we loving it. Totally!

Flower was, shall we say, very skeptical about us actually doing Morning Symposium with regularity. So, I set the alarm on my phone for 9 a.m. When the alarm goes off,  everything stops- work, chores, breakfast, free reading, etc and we gather in the living room for Morning Symposium.

We do our Bible Study first. We are using The Story of Christianity from Memoria Press. The text is a book by the same title, written by David Hart. It is a fascinating read, a sweeping scope of the history of the Christian church, with enough detail and unique information in it to keep even my history saturated children mesmerized. The study guide by MP is, as always, excellent, thorough and thought provoking.

Next up is the History of Art: Creation to Contemporary by Veritas Press, with Art Cards. Yes, we love it. The cards are excellent quality, with great details, the text is fun and tons of review, and interesting inclusions, like artists spotlights. We aren't working too hard on memorizing the cards, but we are doing regular review and learning them all the same.

Memoria Press First and Second Form Latin forms are next. We are using Henle for Latin and the charts are a perfect fit. We do everything we are familiar with, taking about 10 minutes a day.

We recently added in our Literature selection for Challenge B- right now we are reading Little Britches. Love it. And we are doing Latin and Logic flash cards too.

Flower and I continue our time by going over Logic drill cards, too.

The kids were worried they weren't going to be able to complete their "regular" studies if we took an hour each morning together, but we are all loving the connection and quality time together so much that, as you can see, we are adding to our morning routine. Have we missed some days? Yes, but  only those days that 1 or all of us have left the house for some reason (like today, Cub is working for a friend). But if we are all home together, someone is pushing to do Symposium. It's that good.

Even thought Cub is now 16 and Flower is 13, they still create with Legos or sketch while I read, as has been our standard for years.

Morning Symposium; it's been the best addition to our year thus far. As anyone with older kids knows, it's the connection time that often suffers as our kids get older and more involved with academics and outside activities. This time has offered us connection, community and the academic inquiry into subjects that we love and are challenged by.

Do you have a Morning Symposium? If so, what do you include?


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