morning meeting at home

During the COVID-19 quarantine, many families are trying to implement some sort of homeschooling. I think whatever feels good to you, as the parent, is what needs to happen during this time!

With my boys, I’m trying to follow a bit of a schedule. More for myself. Time can get away from me when I’m home here with the boys. My oldest son, Bode always enjoys knowing “the plan for the day”.

Whether you decide to do follow a schedule throughout the day or not, one activity from school that can extrememlty beneficial to continue while at home is a “Morning Meeting”.

Just like us, the kids are wondering whats going on? They may be wondering, ‘when am I going back to school?’. While we don’t have all of the answers, a morning meeting can help establish a sense of stability, structure, and can help to open up discussion about the outside world.

Implementing a morning meeting that includes a schedule can also help with kids asking for snack, asking to play outside, asking for iPad! Having a “schedule” in place allows the children to refer back to the schedule instead of just hearing “no” or “maybe later”. Instead, the response might be “remember our schedule we talked about, we can play iPad after outside time”.

What to include for Morning Meeting?

1. plan for the day: I talk about our schedule, when are we having snack, when is rest time, when its time to get dressed, and I like to add what we are doing during craft/activity time (i.e.: playdoh, making muffins, KiWi CO.)
2. calendar – putting the date up, saying the full date
3. countdown to something. We are counting down for Easter, my birthday, anything with a concrete date!
4. what’s the weather & season
5. designate jobs or complete a job during morning meeting (watering the indoor plants can be a fun job)
6. show and tell (bring a special toy or something they made to just talk about, you can ask them questions about it
7. story time/read a book

Things to remember:

1. Show flexibility in your day. Its been raining/cloudy here but this morning the birds were chirping, the sun was trying to peak out, so we dropped everything and went outside!
2. Let the kids make choices about schedule or activities you are adding in your schedule.
3. Start small, add more to your morning meeting as kids allow.
4. Kids (age appropriate) can help lead portions of the morning meeting.
5. Use props – I have a star pointer that I let each of the boys use when we count up to the date that day, they also get to use that during the color game.
6. Use a designated spot in your house. We just sit on the carpet, near where the baby can roll around during morning meeting.

Here is our current morning meeting routine:

1. Say a morning prayer. Bode actually was saying this prayer that he learned at school and I just thought it was super cute. “Good morning Lord, this is your day, I am your child, show me your way, Amen”
2. Color Game: I say “red, red, something red, can you find me something red” – I pick one of the boys to use the star pointer and go find something in the room that is red. (they each get two turns, switch the color each time)
3. Calendar – put on the magnetic date for the day, then we could up to that number. If it is the 19th, we count to 19. We do the counting two times, so each of the boys can use the star pointer while counting.
4. Sing “Days of the Week” song
5. Sing “Oh, what is the weather song” (discuss season and weather)
6. The boys get to pick what the weather is on our weather wheel. I purchased the calendar kit set off of TeacherPayTeacher, it was just a few dollars. I printed it out and laminated it. TONS of options for calendar activities.
7. Create our daily schedule. We just make a check list of the things we want to do, usually morning meeting –> daily scholastic activity –> snack –> play outside/craft/activity/???? –> lunch –> rest –> iPad time –> …. *we usually for the afternoon just list a few things that we each want to do after rest time*I write a box after each task and Bode enjoys checking the box after we complete each task

We’ve been doing morning meeting for a week now, and I am going to start adding to the morning meeting routine. I’d like to start reading a story and maybe doing a show in tell (my boys love to be the center of attention haha). Bodes teachers had mentioned that they left off with the letter “T”, so I might include something with the letter of the week. I will also be adding a countdown to Easter, just for something to look forward, too!

Thanks for reading!