Keeping Connection in High School -Morning Meeting

When my kids were in Elementary and Middle School we always started the day together.  We talked through prayer requests, prayed together, did Bible together, and started our day together.  When Connor hit high school, his curriculum was designed to be independent and I had only planned to meet with him once a week.  It took me three days into the new school year to decide that I really dissliked that and we changed the structure before the next week started.

Since that time, we have a corporate Morning meeting and then I touch base with each of my kids through out the morning.  Obviously, that was more difficult when Connor was in high school and the twins were not, but it was so much better. 

During the corporate Morning meeting we –

• Talk through prayer requests
• Pray together
• Read poetry – we read the Children’s Book of Poetry and/or the poetry books included in high school
• Talk about current events- my kids are supposed to read at least 3 news article a week and be able to summarize them. We then discuss. 
• Go through our daily schedule and events
• Read aloud. We have read everything from Lord of the Rings, Susan Wise Bauer’s, ” The Story of Western Science” to “A Christmas Carol”. 

Daily Individual Meetings-

I have tried to read at least one to two books in my high schoolers curriculum so that I can have a thorough discussion with them and maintain a connection with their learning.  I also do all the Bible questions out loud instead of  having them write them so that I can make sure they are thinking through the Bible and keeping the Bible verses in context. We go over all their daily lessons and look ahead in their week so that I can help them begin to help them to prioritize their time.  I ask my kids to take thorough notes in math and science and at least once a week  I ask to see these notes to make sure they are thorough.

Does this take more time? Absolutely.  Was it difficult when I had a kid in high school, two in middle school and a pre-school niece at my house? Yes, yes and yes. 

To be able to do all of this and still be able to work with the pre-schooler and then do the twins history and science together, I had to have daily independent lesson plans made for each child.  Each child also had to be trained to keep going on the next task, even when they got stuck, to stay on task and had to learn not to interrupt Mom while she was with someone else.  Generally, individual meetings took less than 20 minutes and I would take questions between meetings. This also meant I needed to train my niece in blanket time.  If my kids were in Elementary, each child had a folder with their daily independent work in it.  Similar to workboxes, but took way less room. Folders had copywork, handwriting, spelling, daily math facts, and math ( if I didn’t need to teach anything).  If my kids finished with their folder, they were directed to read out of the book basket, practice the piano, or read their literature book from the General Reading List which they picked weekly or bi-weekly. 

I found that High Schoolers need more connection and help than the weekly meeting.  They also miss the being together (even if they refuse to admit it), and I find a lot of value in praying together.  I found that the daily accountability was really useful to my freshmen as they couldn’t quite handle that level freedom and needed my help in priotizing and keeping a schedule which included all their extra curricular activities. Training in keeping and following a schedule, making to do lists and looking over an entire weeks schedule has been really vital for my busy college student and my twins who are crazy busy all the time.  They get all their school work done, do their chores, study for Bible Bowl, maintain their social lives, and spend massive amounts of time in leadership at Robotics and have time to sleep because spent time in those early high school years teaching them how-to manage and maintain a schedule and much of that training happened in morning meetings.