A Gentle Charlotte Mason Morning Time Routine

“Morning Time is the simple and worthwhile practice of setting aside time to pursue truth, beauty, and goodness together. Morning Time is flexible and can be adjusted to suit different seasons of family life. Morning Time invites the active participation of everyone involved, as children and parent learn and wonder together.”

-Cindy Rollins

Morning time, morning basket, morning menu, or morning meeting. However you’ve seen it named, you’ve likely seen it posted on instagram and Pinterest. Morning time is a concept often associated with Charlotte Mason but is actually the creation of a homeschooling mom, Cindy Rollins.

Morning Time is rooted in the desire to bring the beautiful feast that Charlotte Mason often talks about to your children on a whole. When you’re homeschooling multiple kids, over multiple ages, Morning Time can be the block where you’re all together learning the same thing. It’s a wonderful concept which Cindy discusses further in her book, Morning Time: A Liturgy of Love. The beauty of Morning time is the amount of freedom you have in creating what works for your family.

Two years ago, I morning tim-ed to the extreme. There were loops, schedules, color coded calendars, just about everything a homeschool family could want or need in a morning time routine. We packed in a novel, pictures, nature study, composer study, unit studies, recitation, devotional, hymns, folk songs, memory work, and character study. The trouble with this amount of content and rigidness was that I caused a lot of unnecessary stress for our beginning hours.

I spent a lot of time considering what I wanted Morning Time to be in our home. I came up with the following desires for the morning time routine:

1. Gentle and easy to implement

2. Encouraging and beautiful

3. Simple routine, less than 20 minutes.

With that in mind we came up with the following morning time routine.

1. Monthly hymn

2. Monthly folksong

3. Picture book

4. Ambleside Online poetry (this term we’re reading Tennyson)

5. Monthly Spanish song

6. Monthly Spanish poem

7. Recitation Poem

8. Family devotional (we read Long Story Short)

In all, our morning time routine is about 25 minute, which feels like a manageable start to our day. This simple approach to our morning time is what has led to the creation of Little Wanderers Morning Time.

Little Wanderers Morning Time is a gentle Charlotte Mason inspired approach to adding a morning time routine in your home. This program is designed for preschool through elementary aged children.
Each month you’ll have a poem to practice recitation, a folksong from around the world, a monthly booklist, and recommendations for chapter books.

This morning time approach is very simple and minimal while also allowing time for you to implement your own faith resources as your family sees fit. We’re excited to bring this new resource to homeschool families!