Join Amy and Leah as they chat with Cindy Rollins about her new book, Morning Time: A Liturgy of Love. The conversations roams from what morning time is, how it fits into a Charlotte Mason homeschool, how morning time cultivates a family culture, and even what to do when your children try to sabotage your plans!
You can find Cindy, including information about her book and her Patreon, at https://morningtimeformoms.com. She is also a host on the Literary Life Podcast: https://theliterary.life.
Listen now, or scroll for show notes!
When we think for a moment, how we must admire the goodness of God in placing us in a world so exceedingly full of Beauty––whether it be of what we call Nature or of what we call Art––and in giving us that sense of Beauty which enables us to see and hear, and to be as it were suffused with pleasure at a single beautiful effect brought to our ear or our eye.
Charlotte Mason, Ourselves
What is Morning Time?
[4:08] A quote from Cindy’s book: “What is Morning time? It is capturing the hours of your day before they flit away. It is making sure the most beautiful things happen first. It is impossible to regret that.”
[4:55] Morning kept us together. It kept other things getting in the way of things that really matter.
[5:42] So many other things were a waste of time. But Morning Time was never a waste of time.
[7:50] How do you develop community?
[8:17] As I’ve gotten older, I still have morning time!
What do you put in Morning Time?
[9:09] Your morning time was loaded with so many good things! How did you decide what to add in?
[10:13] People should start with getting together, reading the Bible, and singing. Eventually, ours became a two-hour thing.
[11:40] You had a lot of years for morning time to grow and change over the years.
[12:03] By consistency, I don’t mean do it every day. I mean that every time I fall off the horse I get back on again.
Avoiding a Rote Morning Time
[14:10] How do we keep morning time from becoming a system, instead of a method?
[14:15] I think it needs to be organic to your family.
[15:10] To make morning time too thematic makes a lot of work for mom, and takes some of the ideas away from your children.
[16:45] We can’t determine what our kids are going to take away from morning time.
[18:10] There is a temptation for morning time to become a platform for mom. Reading Charlotte Mason is a good help for that.
Practical Tips for Morning Time
[20:33] One thing I find consistently challenging is crowd control.
[21:27] Consistency is so important. And it is so hard.
[22:43] Your children do not have to sit quietly during morning time. Engage them physically.
[24:21] You as mom need authority, as Charlotte Mason says. If you have authority in your home, it is much more pleasant.
[26:15] Morning time can be good preparation for sitting in church.
[27:50] Sometimes it’s best to acknowledge that something is going to derail your day.
The Fruit of Morning Time
[28:43] Can you share some of the fruit you’ve seen from morning time?
[29:58] I’ve been in morning time for thirty years!
[29:33] The fruit is rarely a child saying, ‘I remember this’. It is much more internal. But without morning time, seeds wouldn’t have been planted.
[30:40] It’s great to have a family culture where you have read the same books and know the same songs…it’s much more extensive and harder to quantify.
