What is Morning Time?

Morning Time (MT) is widely accepted amongst home educators, as a gentle and wholistic  way of educating children about the most important aspects of learning without compromising on joy, love of learning or wonder, within the home. Morning Time is the practice of singing, reciting and reading aloud short selections of sacred and secular inspirational ideas to children.

Morning Time is practiced extensively within various educational traditions albeit by other names such as, circle time, family time or even morning assembly in formal schools.

The form of Morning Time currently practiced by many Classical Education and Charlotte Mason home schooling families was first introduced by Cindy Rollins, an American home educator in the 1980s. Other home educators like Pam Barnhill and Sarah McKenzie have recently gone a to popularise this idea of Morning Time. 

The person to whom who owe credit for this much cherished habit of reading aloud short, inspiring snippets of delightful ideas to engage a child’s mind, is Charlotte Mason. Ms Mason was a 19th Century English educator and prolific writer, who was way ahead of her time.  Her principles and methods inform the framework of our new morning time resource, A Liturgy of Love. We have titled our new resource as such, as a nod to Cindy Rollin’s beautiful description of this enchanting form of learning in her book, Mere Motherhood and her 2009 handbook on Morning Time.

Why is Morning Time Important?

  1. One of the primary benefits of Morning Time is that it helps parents create a deeply bonded family culture through the ritual of singing, reciting, narrating and reading aloud a mix of inspiring sacred and secular verses, songs and stories together.

    The benefits of reading aloud itself to children even up to teenage years has been well documented. Reading aloud has been proven to improve language skills, help to capture and foster children’s imagination as well as inspire their hearts about living courageous and purposeful lives. 

    Most importantly, reading aloud helps to deepen children’s sense of belonging and connectedness, which is integral for wholesome family living. For more on the benefits of reading aloud  to children see Sarah Mackenzie’s Read Aloud Revival and Sarah Clarkson’s Caught up in a Story and Read for the Heart.

*Other benefits of practicing  Morning Time include

In addition helping family deepen connection, Morning Time brings a plethora of other benefits which includes:

  • Inspiring a sense of wonder by introducing learning in context of the real or imaginative world which heightens the power of observation and the imagination.
  • Encouraging a deep love of learning by bringing dry subjects like history, science or geography to life through living literature, which helps children appreciate the value of learning.
  • Strengthening mental faculties through use of memorisation and narration as learning tools.
  • Facilitating training the eye for beauty through art, music and nature study.
  • Inspires good habits, a sense of adventure, curiosity, resilience and perseverance through stories and biographies of great masters from around the world.
  • Furnishing the atmosphere of a child’s mind with beautiful, meaningful and wholesome ideas and inspiration that would enrich their inner worlds for life. Phil: 4.8
  • Enabling the intentional education of the will and conscience and deepening a child’s sense of identity through fables, myths, fairy tales and folklore which in turn inspires the moral and cultural imagination.
  • Helping parents inspire a culture of joy, kindness, responsibility, critical and creative thinking in their homes.
  • Encouraging love of God, (if you are a faith-based educator) through prayer, memorisation of scripture and hymns, appreciation of poetry, art and bible stories. The practice encourages children to see God as the master creator and storyteller who fills each of us with purpose and our own individual beautiful narrative.