Episode 18 FINAL
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Welcome to the Feast Life, where we empower you, the modern homeschool mom, to create a life and homeschool you love, one founded on faith, family, freedom, and fun. I'm your host Julie Ross, creator of the award winning homeschool curriculum, A Gentle Feast, and a certified Christian life coach. For more information on today's episode and to access my free gift for you, check out thefeastlife. me. Charlotte Mason once said, life should be all living, not a mere tedious passing of time. So on this show, we seek to savor the feast of life. Girl, grab your favorite beverage and pull up a chair. You are welcome at this table.
Hello everyone. I am so excited today to get to talk to you about creating nourishing rhythms and routines in your homeschool. These are some of the practices that I have learned in my 20 plus years of homeschooling and they have made such a difference in my own life and in just the atmosphere and the daily practices that we have in my homeschool.
So this is just a take what feels good to you, take what feels right, and you can leave the rest kind of talk. I'm definitely not telling you like thou shalt must do these things. I'm just sharing with you some of the practices that have helped me and my family and I hope that they will encourage you as well.
So if we haven't met, I'm Julie Ross. I'm the creator of A Gentle Feast, a Charlotte Mason curriculum for the entire family. I have five children ages 23 down to 13, and I'm also a certified Christian life coach. And so today's talk is a combination of what I've learned from my years. As an educator, I was in the public and private sphere before I started homeschooling, from all my years of homeschooling, and then also some of the tools I have learned as a life coach as well, and bringing them all together, because they all are so key to the success of our homeschool, because our homeschool isn't isolated from us, it isn't isolated from the life that we are living, and the atmosphere of our homes, all these things tie together.
And so it's so key to think through these different areas that we're going to discuss today and not just, what math curriculum am I using? Or how should I set up my homeschool room? And all those things are super important, but looking at your life and your family's life comprehensively as a whole and improving that is going to make such a big impact on your homeschool as well.
All right. So Charlotte Mason said, "education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life." And so we are going to look at these three tools that she said we have for educating our children and look at what rhythms and routines we can create for each of these different tools. So what does she mean when she said atmosphere?
So atmosphere is like the air in our house. We can't necessarily always pinpoint it. It's nebulous sometimes. Sometimes we can't even see it. But you could also often think about it like this. If you ever gone into someone's house and you have a certain feeling just from being in their house for a few minutes, their house might feel like really uptight and everything is like perfectly in its place and you're like afraid to breathe because you might break something.
Okay, that's atmosphere. You picked up on it without anybody telling you that. Or growing up I had friends who were Italian and their homes were like really loud and there's always people talking and there's always all these moving parts everywhere and it was just really fun, kind of family loving atmosphere.
Okay. And you would just pick up on that. And so each home, each family has a certain kind of atmosphere. Charlotte Mason says we have that as a tool for educating our children. How is that even possible? I love this quote. This comes from a parent's review magazine article. Charlotte Mason was the editor of this magazine.
And when I read this, I was so just convicted on the power of atmosphere. So let me read it to you. "There are many important aspects of home life, from first training to highest education. But there is nothing in the way of direct teaching that will ever have so wide and lasting an effect as the atmosphere of home. And the gravest thought concerning this is that in this instance, there's nothing to learn and nothing to teach. The atmosphere emanates from ourselves, literally is ourselves. Our children live in it and breathe it. And what we are is thus incorporated into them." Those are some powerful words, right? So what's going to have the most lasting effect on your children?
It is the atmosphere of the home that they grow up in. This is not something we can purchase. This is not something that we can teach. This is literally coming from us. So I ask you, what is the atmosphere that you're creating? When you really think about it. How does it feel to be in your home? How does it feel to be in your family and in your homeschool?
How do you want it to feel? What do you want your family to experience and be known as? What's important to you? Because this atmosphere is coming from you. So if you're trying to fit yourself in a box of what you think like a homeschool family should look like this and our house should look like this and it's not really you.
You're going to feel very uncomfortable. When I read this quote for the first time, if I'm honest, I would have said that the atmosphere of our home was very stressful. I was very much like a drill sergeant in our homeschool. And did you finish that? And we only have 10 more minutes. We have to get in the car and do this.
We've only done 10 problems. You should be done with this assignment by now. And I feel like every day I was just like herding cattle from one thing to the next thing all day long with my five kids. And I didn't want my home to feel like that. I wanted my home to feel fun and relaxed and peaceful and curious.
And so I realized that the atmosphere that I was creating in my home was something that I didn't want. So we're always creating an atmosphere in our home. The question is, are you intentionally creating the atmosphere that you want? So I ask you, what kind of atmosphere do you want to create? And if that's not what is currently possible, or what is currently happening in your home, how can we change that?
These rhythms and routines that I'm going to talk about are going to help that. Because the atmosphere of home emanates from us, these rhythms and routines are going to be focused on us and the things that we can control and the things that we can change, and that's going to change the atmosphere of our home.
So let's break this down a little bit. Are the thoughts that you routinely think about your homeschool giving you the results that you want? So I would argue that the atmosphere of your home is being created by the thoughts and feelings that you have. So let me explain this a little more. If you are thinking, This shouldn't be so hard. My child is so difficult. We are so far behind. We're never going to figure this out. If you routinely think thoughts like that in your homeschool, how does that make you feel? When I just said those words to you, that made me feel crummy. That made me feel almost ashamed. Like I wanted to go and hide it in a corner somewhere.
Made me feel real discouraged. Like it didn't really want. Make me want to do a whole lot. So then those feelings are going to lead to our actions. Like I said, if I feel shame, I want to go hide. I may pull away from my kids, pull away from our homeschool. I'm not going to be as fully engaged and motivated and present as I want to be.
If I'm feeling really discouraged or hopeless, I might not put much effort into things. I might give up easily. If my kid starts resisting, I'm like, Okay, fine, we don't have to do this today. Those are the actions that I would take when I have those kind of thoughts. What result am I going to get in my homeschool then?
Is that going to create the atmosphere that I want to in my homeschool? No, right? We're going to be disconnected from each other. We're going to feel stressed. I know there have been times where I felt that thought, where I have thought that thought of, Oh my goodness, we're so far behind and my child's never going to learn this.
And that makes me feel very anxious. And when I feel really anxious, I feel like the need to control everything and micromanage everybody. What result does that give me? That just gives me my kids resisting more, quite honestly, because now they're really annoyed with me because I'm being so controlling and overbearing.
That's not creating an atmosphere in my home that's peaceful and fun and curious. And so in order to get the result that we want, in order to create the atmosphere that we want, we really have to look at what we're thinking on a regular basis. The thoughts that we routinely feel, excuse me, the thoughts that we routinely think lead us to feel a certain way and those become habitual.
Our brains just naturally go to those thoughts. And anytime a kid, shows any kind of resistance, Ah, see, he's so difficult. Or anytime the lesson didn't go as planned, Ah, see, he's homeschooling so hard. Our brains just naturally go to those thoughts because the more you think them, the stronger those neural pathways become and the easier it is to think those thoughts.
So if we want to change the atmosphere of our home, we have to develop the habit of thinking nourishing thoughts. And I will talk a little bit more about what those thoughts might look like here in a second. What we need to do is we need to train our brain to focus on possibilities instead of problems.
So our brains are naturally geared to find out what's wrong that keeps us safe that's, keeps us surviving. And so we naturally see what is wrong in our environment. We actually have to train our brain to find the possibilities. What could happen? What good is there in this moment? What lessons are there?
And we start to train our brain to think differently by finding things to be grateful for, to find those small wins, to be encouraged. And even if the whole day maybe went off the rails, but we had that one moment where our child was able to read a really hard word, our child was able to solve a math problem, or we just had some sweet snuggle time on the couch.
Being grateful. And focusing on that instead of focusing on all the areas of our homeschool that we want to fix. That doesn't mean we're going to ignore things and put on, rose colored glasses and be like, Oh, it's all wonderful in there. We know what's wrong. Our brains will naturally tell us all the things that we need to fix and work on.
We need to train it to find the good. And the more that we do that's going to change the atmosphere of our home. It's going to train our brains to start to think different thoughts. Charlotte Mason put it this way, "In this way we think as we're accustomed to think. Ideas come and go and carry on a ceaseless traffic in the rut, let us call it. You have made for them in the very nerve substance of the brain. You do not deliberately intend to think these thoughts. You may indeed object strongly to the line they are taking. Two trains of thought going on at one in the same time. In objecting, you may be able to barricade the way. To put up no road in big letters. And to compel the busy populace of the brain world to take another route."
So basically what she's saying here, and it's so cool because, she wrote this in the early 1900s and now MRIs and science has shown and proven what she was saying back here that the thoughts that we routinely think actually do change the physical substance of our brain.
And the more that we think that thought that stronger that neural pathway becomes the stronger that rut is. Okay, if you have a carriage going down a muddy road, the more those wheels of the carriage go down, the deeper that rut is going to be. The same thing with our brains, but God made our brains neuroplastic.
We can be transformed by the renewing of our minds. We don't have to stay stuck in these same thoughts and these same patterns that we've always thought. We can tell our brain, and we can train it, to go down another road. And I love this picture, because I actually, at times, picture myself, holding up, like the train's coming, and I'm holding up a no road sign.
Go this way instead! And so when I start to think those thoughts of that are very discouraging when I start to think homeschooling so hard, this child is so difficult. We're never going to get through with all these lessons. My child's never going to learn long division and all these thoughts. I say, no, we are going to go down a new road and I can tell my brain what to think instead.
And I want to encourage you, if you feel like you are stuck in kind of this negative mental rut and it's affecting the atmosphere of your home, which is the greatest tool we have for shaping and molding our children, according to the first article I read for you, you need to spend this time to train your brain to think differently.
So what three words describe how you want to show up in your homeschool? I want you to take the time, write them down if you are watching this somewhere where you can write. I really want you to do this process. Don't wait till later, you won't do it. What three words describe how you want to show up in your homeschool?
So for me, I want it to be fun. That was definitely one of my words. That was something I didn't feel like our home atmosphere was fun at all. Like I said, it was just like I was being a drill sergeant all day long. I didn't like that. That didn't feel fun. My kids didn't like it. It didn't feel fun to them.
I wanted to have this light kind of playful atmosphere of our home. So one of my words was fun. One of my other words was nurturing. I wanted to show up in a way that was kind and compassionate and present for my children and being engaged. I wanted to be really there, really present, like I said, and really engaged, asking curious questions getting involved in the things that we're doing.
Whatever those things are for you, however it is that you want to show up in your homeschool, you need to train your brain to think thoughts that are going to help you show up in that way. I had to teach myself to think differently because my brain didn't naturally think about, Oh, how can we make this more fun?
Or what would feel fun right now? I didn't have those thoughts. I had to start asking myself those questions to think differently. What would an engaged mom do in this moment? How would a connected mom respond to this temper tantrum that my child's having right now? So when you think through, you Think about your three words and how you want to show up as your most nurturing self in your homeschool.
What are you going to have to train your brain to think differently in order to show up that way? So here are some thoughts that I started training my brain how to think. I am the perfect person to homeschool my children. We are on a journey and progressing at the perfect pace. I will not fear because I work in cooperation with the divine teacher.
When I say thoughts like that to myself, I feel calm. I feel empowered. I feel confident. I feel encouraged. I know I can rest and be patient because we're on this journey and we don't have to figure everything out today. I feel confident because I know, yes, I'm the perfect person. I'm around these kids more than anybody else.
God put them in my family for a purpose and a reason. Of course, I'm the perfect person. Yes, I got this. I feel motivated and inspired. So instead of thinking thoughts that make me feel ashamed or anxious or discouraged. Started teaching my brain to think thoughts that would allow me to show up in my home the way that I wanted to.
So I want you to think of at least three sentences, right? At least three sentences based on those three words that you chose. For what you need to tell yourself. What do you need to believe about yourself in order to show up that way? Thinking these thoughts routinely will change the atmosphere of your home.
So I could have told you, this is how you're going to schedule your day. And this is how you're going to have your, like your routine for where they put their school books when they're finished with their school. And this is our routine for lunch and read alouds. Those are all great and they're all great to think through.
But what's going to have the most impact on your children and on your homeschool is this atmosphere of home, which comes from you and the thoughts that you are routinely thinking, so we are equipped. God allows us again to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. He allows us to take our thoughts captive.
When you think of that metaphor that Charlotte Mason said about going down a road and saying no more, take that thought captive, get that train captive and say no, we are going to believe something differently now, and over time by routinely thinking different thoughts. You're going to show up in your homeschool different.
You're going to feel different. And when you feel different, you're going to take different actions. If I believe I'm the perfect person to homeschool my child, and my child is resisting me, I can trust that I'm going to figure this out. I'm gonna figure out how to respond right now because I'm the perfect person to homeschool this child.
I know them better than anybody else. If I feel very stressed and anxious because I feel like, oh, we're so behind because they're supposed to be on week whatever and we're only here. I can go, no, we're on the perfect journey. We're progressing at the perfect pace. What's the next thing we should do today?
When I'm feeling really anxious and worried, and I don't know if my child's ever going to learn long division, I can rest and allow my child the time they need to learn this concept and kind of work through it themselves instead of me jumping in and trying to fix it for them. Because I know that I'm working in cooperation with the divine teacher.
So see how all of these different thoughts change how we're going to act in our homeschool, and that's going to give us a different result. It's going to change how we show up, and then it's going to change how our children respond to us as well. Rhythms of thought lead to different atmosphere in your home.
Think about what it is that you are thinking on a regular basis, because your family needs you to show up as your most nourishing self. You need to nourish your heart and your soul and your mind on a regular basis, so that you are pouring from a full cup. So often as homeschool moms, we're so good at nurturing and caring for families, and we're so good at providing them the love and the support and the kindness that we need.
And we don't show that same love and support and kindness to ourselves. We are our own worst critics, we are our own worst enemies, we will beat ourselves up over that thing didn't go well, or I didn't do that thing right, or I'm not getting all the dishes done. And we don't allow ourselves to have compassion for ourselves, be like, yeah, this is hard work that we are doing.
This is great work. This is kingdom work, but it is hard and there are hard days. What do you need right now? I ask myself that question often when I'm just feeling, I think, if this was my child or this was my best friend, I would say, what do you need right now? How can I help you? And so I asked myself that question and usually I'll go, yo I think what I need right now is a good a good bath.
I need some time out. I need to go. I think I need to go for a walk or I think I just need to clear my head for a couple minutes and allow yourself the things that nourish you. And the things that fill your cup as well. Charlotte Mason said it this way. "There is no sadder sight in life than a mother who has so used up herself in her children's childhood that she has nothing to give them in their youth. Then, when her children come to that most difficult time between childhood and full development, she is nonplussed. And though she may do much for her children, she cannot do all she might. She as they were growing, is there not some need for mother culture, but how is the state of things to be altered? So many mothers say, I simply have no time for myself. I never read a book or else I don't think it's right to think of myself. They not only starve their minds, but they do it deliberately with a sense of self sacrifice. Which seems to supply ample justification."
And I spent so many years pouring from an empty cup, being so exhausted, being so tired, feeling so burnt out and overwhelmed just all the time. Because I was never allowing myself the time to fill my own cup up. And like this quote here, I was like yeah, because I shouldn't, spend 15 minutes on myself. Not realizing I was really depriving my children. Like she's saying here, they're going to come a time when they are teenagers and I need to be growing my own mind as they're growing so I can keep having these meaningful, juicy conversations with them about life and what's going on in the world and what I'm learning and they can see that within me that I am growing, I am changing, I am learning new things, I have a passion for life and that's going to change the atmosphere of our home when they see me Being a lifelong learner, they're going to want to do that for themselves.
So in order to change the atmosphere of our home, we also have to think of what routines and rhythms do you have in your day for mother culture? My Children were younger and they still had nap time or rest time. I would set the timer for 15 minutes after lunch and I would light a candle and I would make some tea and I would read a book that would just fill my heart in my mind for just 15 minutes, because I still had to do chores and those kind of things while they were taking their nap.
But just having that 15 minutes for a little personal tea time filled me up so much to carry me through the rest of the day. In the mornings, do you have time in the morning where you are spending feeding your heart and your soul and your mind? I'll talk about that in a little bit more later, but think through your day.
Where can you just find little pockets? It doesn't have to be four hours where you're going to sit and read a book. Okay, that's not realistic. So these little pockets of time throughout your day and having these little rhythms where you're feeding your heart, soul, and mind really do add up to make a huge difference.
Today's episode is brought to you by A Gentle Feast. A Gentle Feast offers a complete living books curriculum, an award winning early reading program, and more tools to equip you to apply Charlotte Mason's timeless philosophy into your modern homeschool. Go to agentlefeast. com to check it out. Smooth and easy days are closer than you think.
So look at this is Charlotte Mason schedule. Y'all. Okay. So first of all, she had a set wait time, which is so important. And I did not have this for years and I was just waking up whenever the kids woke me up and it was just mass chaos. So I highly recommend having a set wait time. Hopefully before your children wake up.
I know when you have little ones or you're having a baby, like I'm not talking to you. Okay, but if you have preschool children and older you can train them to stay in their rooms. I, my, my children were around three or four. I would train them. Okay. Until the clock says eight zero zero, you need to stay in your room and play.
This is mommy's time. So having a set wake time really does help and it helps with your sleep rhythms as well, which is going to give you more energy. So Charlotte Mason would have breakfast and during that time, she'd do her personal Bible reading. So again, having, this is hard work, like you're going to go run a race.
You want to go run a marathon without training for it. I hope not. And so in order to prepare for the day that we have, in order to prepare for this mighty kingdom work that we're doing, we need to fill our own soul in the mornings. I do what's called a powerhouse 30, which is just 10 minutes. I do 10 minutes of moving my body, like lifting light weights or stretching, 10 minutes of beating my soul, doing my Bible devotional reading, and then 10 minutes of journaling where I write out my intentions and my plans and my thoughts for the day.
So keep it simple. Even if you're only spending 15 minutes doing your devotions in the morning or 10 minutes, depending on your time, but start small and build from there. But these routines are so important. If you notice in bold, this is all the time Charlotte Mason spent during her day that was feeding her own mind, feeding her own soul. So she had her Bible devotions. Then you can see after some work time, she has a light break where she reads the news and then she reads 10 minutes from a classic author. So again, very small chunks here. Then during lunch, she reads a travel book or a biography.
Then she spent two hours outside in nature every day, y'all, which is just amazing to me. And I so wish. I was doing this because I know that would be so nourishing for my soul, but even if you can only get 10 minutes to sit outside, like that personal tea time, take that outside. Get 10 minutes where you can sit out in the sun is so nourishing and refreshing for your body.
And then after dinner, she would read from her favorite novel for an hour. So again, I want you to see it's not one big chunk. She has little pockets throughout her day for this mother culture where she's nourishing her body, heart, soul, mind. And think through your day, when you're planning out your rhythms and your routines for the day.
Where can I add some little pockets in to feed myself? So important, because that is really going to change the whole entire atmosphere of your home, which is the most powerful tool that you have.
Alright, let's move on to rhythms of discipline. By discipline, Charlotte Mason means habits. What habits are you laying out in your homeschool? Victor Hugo said, "where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidents, chaos will soon reign." Can I get it? Amen. When there's no plan for your day. Chaos is going to take over, right? Especially with lots of kids. We want to have a plan for our day.
Now, this isn't a rigid schedule. This isn't a must do this at all cost. But we want to have a certain flow for our day. We want to have habits of how our day is going. These rhythms and routines. Because that will help your children learn better. Susan Schaefer McCauley in the book For the Children's Sake, which if you haven't read it, It's my must read for anyone interested in Charlotte Mason.
She said, "Routines form habits. Bad habits make slaves of those who have them. But good habits are like tracks along which our usual behavior runs." Like those tracks that Charlotte Mason was talking about. "This frees us up to concentrate on the most important choices we have to make in life. Children love routines. It frees their attention for the activity at hand." So research has shown this. When children know what's coming next, they're able to focus more. They're not worried. Okay. Now every day seems to be different around here and I don't know what's coming next and I don't know what to decide to do. And there's a lot of like decision fatigue is what the new buzzword is for this kind of concept of our brain always having to make choices and always having to make decisions when we have routines, it frees our brain up to focus on other things.
I don't know if you've ever noticed that, like, when you're driving somewhere that you've driven to a million times, and your brain doesn't have to think about it, and you get there, and you go, Wait, how did I just get here? Because your brain was, like, thinking other thoughts, right?
I have my best ideas in my most creative moments when I'm driving in the car. Because my brain doesn't have to focus on, making dinner or something like that. I've driven this way a million times. My brain can start to think about other things. And so when our children know what's coming throughout our day, and they have this rhythm and this flow, then it frees them to pay attention to their lessons.
It frees them to think creative thoughts about whatever it is that they're listening to, or the picture that they're looking at, or the music that they're hearing. It allows them to be more focused and have better attention. So we want to think through our day in terms of these routines, and how we can make our day flow easier and develop a discipline of habit.
Learn that this is just what we do. And then when this is over, this is what we do next. Do all the days look the same? No. But when you have a flow to most of your days, when the unexpected happens, when the emergency happens, it doesn't derail you. Because you can go right back to your routine, because it's habitual.
So we want to make things in our lives habits, so our brains aren't constantly having to think about them, or constantly having to use our willpower to make us do certain things. Thanks. So I want you to think through what are your big rocks in your homeschool. So what are your priorities? What are the things that are most important to you?
Okay, write down at least three things. What are your priorities for your homeschool? So I don't know if you've ever seen this demonstration where someone takes a jar and they fill it with a bunch of rice or sand or pebbles and then they try to add in some big rocks and the rocks don't fit. Then they take everything out, and they put the big rocks in the jar first, and then they pour in the rice, the sand, the pebbles, whatever.
This visual shows people that in order to have your priorities be scheduled and met in your life, you need to put them in your calendar first. So whatever your biggest priorities are for your homeschool, those need to go in your daily weekly plans first, and then everything else can fall around it.
Or if you're planning like your week or your year, if it's a bigger thing, like a huge priority for me is taking my kids to different historical sites and doing those kind of field trips. As I'm planning out my year, that's a priority that goes on the calendar 1st and then the rest of our days can be scheduled out around that.
It might be something that you do on a regular basis. If your priority is that we Get to read great quality literature together. Okay. Every day we're going to do that. When are you going to do it? Are you going to do it during morning time? Are you going to do it at lunch? When are you going to do it before bed?
When are you going to do that reading aloud? This allows you to make sure that the priorities that are meaningful for you and your family and the atmosphere that you want to create are actually happening. So I use a block schedule. I don't do like at 8 o'clock, we're going to do this and at 10, we're going to do this because keeping track of time like that is very stressful for me.
But Charlotte Mason had very short lessons and she had different time blocks for different lessons. So I give myself, okay, this morning time is 30 minutes. Math should take 40 minutes for this age kid. Copywork will take 5 minutes. And allowing us to have a general time helps us focus. So we're not spending all day.
Here's your list of assignments and you have all day to do them. Our brain will take all day to do them, but by having a focused time, okay. For these next 30 minutes, we're doing this math lesson. I can stay focused on that. And so this is the flow for our day. Again, take what you can and leave rest. So we start off, I start off my day with a morning routine, which is pretty long.
Like I said, I do my powerhouse 30, but. I take a shower, I work, those kind of things. So we start our school day, we have a school start time, and we do our morning time. At first, you want to make this inviting. I would have a candle, and soft music, or tea, or breakfast on the table.
You want them to come together. You want to make it inviting for them. When I first started homeschooling, someone told me that we should start our day off with math, because math is really hard and we should just get it over with. And if that works for you and your family, great. Don't change anything.
But for me, it was like someone handing me a mop first thing. When I woke up in the morning, be like, good morning, Julie. Here, go mop the floor. And I would be like, nevermind, pulling my covers back over. Cause mopping is like my least favorite chore. Why would I expect my kids to come to school? Excited hearts ready to learn if I'm giving them like their least favorite subject to start with and they're often doing this and that and it just felt very chaotic.
So starting the day off together feels really nice for us. So we have our morning time. Then soup and salad. This is the subjects that we're learning together. Then our individual learning times, I call this the main feast, so you can see this is like the courses of a meal here. And then for dessert, we would read aloud during lunch, maybe do some handicrafts nature study, those kind of things after lunch.
And then having a school shutdown time is so important because otherwise school can lead into your life and take over your whole entire day. So having a time when school is over, so even if the assignments aren't done, we'll pick up tomorrow. What do you do when school's over? Okay, you put the pencils back here, you plug in your computer over here, you put this book here.
Not having just mass chaos and then suddenly the day's over and everybody's going wherever. So having a school shutdown really helped me and that's one of those rhythms and routines again that just we know when it's over, here's what everybody does. And then you can have your evening activities and those kinds of things.
So thinking through my day in that flow really helped me. So think through what are your priorities? And then, what do you want to come first? What do you want to come second? What do you want to come third? And building that routine in, again, you don't have to do it every day to build a routine, but you want to do it most of the time.
Alright, the next thing is rhythms of life. Education is an atmosphere. We talked about how that emanates from us. And how our thoughts and our feelings create a certain atmosphere in our home. We talked about the rhythms of discipline, which are habits, which are what do you habitually do during your homeschool day and having routines.
And then we're going to talk about the rhythms of life here. And when Charlotte Mason says education is a life, she's talking about living ideas. For this school startup morning time, What do you need to have ready to make today successful? How can I invite everybody to the table? Like I said, try to make it inviting.
What subjects do you want to include? But the most important question is, how can I make this a life giving habit? When we have something that's beautiful like a candle, when we have beautiful music, when we're all together, that's very life giving, that's very nurturing. I include, picture study in our, in poetry study in our morning time.
So we're filling our hearts and minds with things that are beautiful before we start our homeschool day. That makes this a life giving habit. That's what she says about education is life. It's these living ideas. She said, it's a morning wasted if we haven't given our children a living idea. So if nothing else, we have our morning time.
We're filling ourselves with biblical truth, with beauty, goodness, and those are going to nourish us and grow our hearts and our minds. Oh, here's the question. Here's the quote I just said, but I paraphrase. Let me read the real quote. It is not too much to say that a morning in which a child receives no new ideas a morning wasted.
However closely the little student has been kept at his book. So just checking boxes isn't going to do it. You want to fill them with new ideas. Charlotte makes and says this is the only food that our brains can process. This is what is going to grow them as a person. Are these ideas? How do we get ideas?
They're conveyed through rich books. They're conveyed through biblical truth. They're conveyed through beauty, and art, and music, and poetry. Think about what subjects you might want to include to start your morning time. Don't try to do too much. I have seen people do that. And their morning time's lasting like an hour, and everybody falls apart, and nobody's paying attention.
30 minutes for us is like the golden spot of, this is how much we can pay attention. So there is our morning routine. Our morning time and you can see some of the things that we would do for morning time there on my chalkboard and some of the artists and composers and people that we're learning about during this time, but having that special time together as a family is so sweet.
And now that I have adult children this is just 1 of the things I miss so much. It's just having everybody together around the table. It really does create that connection and that sweet memories for you and your family. And Cindy Rollins in her book, mere motherhood talks about how morning time is like a little grain of sand.
We might not have hours and hours and hours of time, but the little things that we do consistently through the years shape our children. And so if every day we're filling them with biblical truth, with beauty and with goodness. Day after day, year after year, it doesn't have to be a lot of time.
Just these little grains of sand add up to an amazing life. So what do I include in morning time? Like I said, first we have Bible reading, we do memory verse, we sing hymns, we sing folk songs we do composer study where we pick one composer per term to learn about, we do picture study where we learn about one artist and we look at several of their pictures over the term.
Recitation is something we don't really do much in modern times, but in Charlotte Mason's time that would have been a really big deal because there wasn't, television or the internet. So what did you do to be entertained? You would listen to go, people go give wonderful speeches, recite poetry, recite Shakespeare, those kind of things.
So recitationist. Just reciting a poem or a speech or something like that. Poetry studies where we're actually learning about a poet and looking at some of their work. And then I try to do a read aloud during morning time where we're all together. This could be fables, folktales, Shakespeare. We've read different biographies about different persons.
I just pick something that goes along with what everybody's learning about. What's really cool is what happens to your brain during morning time. This is the best way to prepare your child to learn for the rest of the day. And when I discovered all of this, I was so excited because, Oh my goodness, this is amazing.
Morning time actually does all these things that are going to help them learn throughout the rest of the day. This isn't just an extra thing or a waste of time. These subjects that Charlotte Mason included, now she didn't have morning time, she included them throughout her day, but these subjects that she included as part of her programs are so life giving and here's why.
It actually changes your brain. So during composer study, when you're listening to classical music, it increases dopamine, which is that happy chemical. Decreases your blood pressure, which makes you feel more calm than relaxed. I know we all need to feel that, right? It improves your memory, listening to classical music when you study.
It has shown that, it helps you study better. So doing these things in the morning really does help them throughout the rest of the day. For picture study, you're looking at a famous piece of art. For a minute or two, and then you take it away and your child is going to tell you about it. So when they're looking at a piece of art, it's stimulating both their unconscious and conscious brain functions, what they're seeing, and then believe the surface there.
And it helps them with their analytical and problem solving skills. Was the mountain next to the tree or was it behind the tree or was the guys? Was this shirt red or was it blue? Or it was like an in between color, like having them describe the picture to you builds their analytical and problem solving skills because they're really having to hone in on the different nuanced aspects of the art piece.
Listening to poetry is so amazing. It lights up the emotional centers of your brain and it develops complex reasoning with all the metaphors and illusions and beautiful things that we have in poetry. During morning time and in Charlotte Mason's programs, poetry was just meant to be read and enjoyed for the beautiful language that it is.
It's not dissecting the iambic pentameter or figuring out what all the metaphors mean in a poem. Just enjoy it for the beautiful language that it is. Singing! I had no idea we would love singing so much until we started singing hymns and folk songs in our home school. When you sing, it releases endorphins, like It's really hard to frown when you're singing like an elf, right?
Singing makes you happy. It makes you smile. Singing also improves your memory. They've shown that people who have Alzheimer's, they might not remember somebody's name, but they can remember songs that they learned when they were a little child. It strengthens your temporal lobes, again, that's part of the part of your brain that is going to last, even when you get older, that temporal lobe.
And then we read aloud, and reading aloud connects neurons in the brain between different ideas and different concepts. It releases oxytocin, which is that bonding chemical. Not only does it help you all bond together, but it helps you bond to the character in the story and build empathy that way. It develops sequential reasoning, like what came first, what was at the end, and it increases cognitive functions.
By listening to stories, your brain is just lighting up in so many different centers, and so much is happening. It's so exciting. All these different subjects, again, in just 5 to 10 minutes in the mornings. Okay, and then we add our Bible time, that's about 30 minutes altogether for our morning time, and we're done.
But I've laid such a beautiful foundation for my children for the rest of their day. Morning time has changed me as a person, y'all. I crave morning time. I love listening to the music and learning cool things about these artists and composers and poets that I've never learned about. And it fills my heart and my soul and so often like when I'm struggling with something like our Bible story for the day will be directly related to the thing that I was struggling with.
We read Heidi and I just remember I was really struggling with accepting some of the things that were happening in my life. And then I'm reading my kids a story about this little. Orphan girl and all the thing hardships that she's having to go through and I'm like, Oh my goodness, I can accept it.
Look at her. She has such faith in this story. It's amazing how these things that we teach our children change us as well. And that's what makes them nourishing. These are why these are nourishing routines. These are why they're life giving. So there's things that you do by yourself to nourish your own heart and mind and then there's things that you do together that are also nourishing you alongside your children.
All right, I have a free morning time packet if you want to get started with morning time. You can scan that QR code so it's a free four week morning time and it's all focused on times of togetherness. So all of the art and the poetry and the composer study and I threw in some fun activities in there as well are all focused on bringing your family together.
And creating that bonded, connected atmosphere in your home. So you can scan that and get a copy of that if you like. All right, and then it's the rest of your day full of living ideas. So it's not just we have our morning time, but we want to make sure that the rest of our day has living ideas as well.
So is the rest of your day full of living ideas? Charlotte Mason says we are in cooperation with the divine teacher. And she says, "supposing we are willing to make this great recognition to engage ourselves to accept and invite the daily hourly incessant cooperation of the divine spirit and to put it definitely and plainly the schoolroom work of our children. How must we shape our own conduct to make this cooperation active or even possible? We are told that the spirit is life. Therefore, that which is dead, dry as dust, mere bare bones, can have no affinity with him, can do no other than smother and deaden this vitalizing influence. A first condition of this vitalizing teaching is that all thought we offer to our children shall be living thought.
No mere dry summary of facts will do. Given the vitalizing idea, children will readily hang the mere facts upon the idea, as upon a peg, capable of sustaining all that is needful to retain. We begin by believing in the children as spiritual beings of unmeasured powers. Intellectual, moral, spiritual, capable of receiving and constantly enjoying intuitions from the intimate converse of the divine spirit."
So they have the divine spirit teaching them, which is so amazing. We need to cooperate with the Holy Spirit. How do we do that? By giving our children living ideas. She says if we try to stuff them full of facts, if we're giving them dry workbook pages or dry textbooks to read. We are dedicating and smothering this natural curiosity that our children have this natural working with the divine spirit.
So we want to fill our days with living ideas, which again, come from living books, rich books, beautiful literature, which come from art and music and poetry, which come from being outside in nature. Okay, so we want to give our children the very best books we can that are full of these living ideas.
Given, give your children a single valuable idea and you have done more for his education than if you had laid upon his mind the burdens of bushel, the burden of bushels of information. So we don't want to just pour more and more facts on them, give them more and more things to memorize or learn. What's most important is giving them this valuable idea.
And if in the day you gave them an idea, it is a great day. And that idea will grow and learn inside their mind as it fed upon other ideas and to take courage in that, she goes on to say, let us observe notebook in hand the orderly and progressive sequence, the penetrating quality, the irresistible appeal, the unique content of the divine teaching.
Let us read not for our profiting, though, that will come, but for love of that knowledge, which is better than thousands of gold and silver by and by, we perceive that this knowledge is the chief thing in life. The meaning of Christ's sayings, Behold, I make all things new, dawns upon us. We get new ideas as to the relative worth of things.
New vigor, new joy, new hope are ours. So this is why it is so important, notebook in hand, to read God's word, that even though it will profit us, it's for that love of knowledge. For that love of God, that we can get new vigor, new joy and new hope. Don't we all need some new vigor and energy and joy and hope in our homeschools?
That's why it's so important to have that daily practice where you are feeding your own mind and cooperating with the divine teacher and having that quiet time and that personal time with God for yourself. Alright, so I would love to connect with you. You can find my Facebook group. It's actually called the Feast Life Community now.
And on Instagram, I'm @agentlefeast. So thank you everyone. I hope this was helpful and encouraging in order for you to develop new rhythms and routines that will affect the atmosphere of your home, the discipline of the habits that you have, and the life giving ideas that you're giving your children, it was so wonderful to talk to you today.
Bye everyone.
Hey there, Julie Ross here. I just wanted to say thank you for listening to today's episode. If you like this show, it would mean the world to me. If you would leave a positive review in iTunes, this really does help people learn about the podcast and each month I will pick a winner to receive a free gift.
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