morning rituals

I thought I would share a piece of our evolving morning ritual. Part of our new homeschool preschool experiment is something called "circle time", which is the opening activity of the day, and something that has been surprisingly fun to get into the habit of doing. There have been some hiccups with fighting and yelling and bad attitudes, plus Violet getting out control, but for the most part we are all enjoying it.

After breakfast and getting dressed, we go get our candle to light together on the window sill (the kids are totally enamored of the candle, and the smoke when we blow it out), and we say a little poem together. Then I lay out our circle time blankets in front of the bay window so we can sit down together and say a little prayer for our day. 

We say a few poems or sing songs together, trying to say a couple of the same ones all week long so the kids can get some memorization in, and then I have been reading the same story out of the Jesus Storybook Bible all week so the story can sink in. We will move on to the next story each week. Throughout all of that I usually have to police Violet because she likes to jump up and attack the candle. She has already lost some of her hair in the candle.....oopsies.

Gathering to light the candle in the morning sunshine is pretty special. Once circle time is over, we go to the candle together to say another little closing poem and blow it out together. After that I try to take them out to the deck for whatever morning lesson I've got planned.

Doing lessons with Clover is really an experiment at this point. I bought kindergarten curriculum, so I can't expect things to just work like the syllabus does. Gauging her interest level, and figuring out the right level of challenge to keep her interested but not frustrated is going to be a bit of a process. She is really enjoying the fairy tale focus in the Oak Meadow curriculum. You work from one fairy tale a week, and that story has a letter of the alphabet that you focus on from A-Z throughout the year. Our first story was Peter Rabbit, which Clover has loved hearing over and over. 

It's a race between the girls to see who can blow out the candle. Violet is a much more effective blower. Clover mostly blows down her chin

 

One of the afternoon activities I came up with this week, if you can even call it an "activity", is eating grapes with toothpicks for building dexterity....and passing time by slowing down the grape eating process to a slow crawl. lol

I finally got a belt *mostly* done for Clover's princess Leia dress, so I've got to get some photos shot of her little outfit. She loves wearing it....I think she needs a hat with some buns on it though. haha. Violet's Wild Thing wolf suit is in process right now. She is fired up over getting it done, and attacked me a few times while I was working on it. So very appropriate!