Beracá Valley Academy: Morning Round-Up

About a year ago, after I had joined up and started actually reading through the myriad of posts over at the Ambleside Online Forum, I ran across the concept of Morning (or Circle) Time. Hmmmm. So slowly I have been trying to gather more and more things that we all can do on common ground. And I do this first thing, at the crack of 9:30...before each goes his separate way and before grumpy and tired attitudes kick in (or get worse!).

This New Year we have been doing the following, with a once-a-week review of the Pledge of Allegiance, our mailing address and phone number spread over 3 days as well...

1. Put on Spotify (I love this app!) and play the month's/week's assortment of music, which I have categorized into a Playlist. ... folksong, composer's selections, and hymn.

2. Do a short devotional (I am using Gotta Have God from Legacy Press right now).

3. Pray

4. Review/recite memory verses (I am using the Simply Charlotte Mason Scripture Memory System with the cards printed out and stored in a little box).

5. Calendar Time ... We head over to our giant wall calendar and do this all in Spanish. Sing a days of the week song, talk about what day it is today, then count up to the date and say it all together. If there are special days coming up in the month, I will ask how many days until that event to reinforce numbers and hear a different question in Spanish. Finally we say the season and then talk about the weather.

6. At this point, we easily segue into our Spanish lesson from this book by Cherrydale Press.

After which everyone goes their own way of learning for the day. With a toddler and a 5yo as the younger two, I mostly have them just play together so I can have more focused learning time with my 7yo.