mom and kids doing Morning TimePin
Pinterest Hidden Image

We love to say that Morning Time is for everyone from toddler to mom. No matter what your age, you can always take something from the subjects in Morning Time. This week Meghan Dempster is here to emphasize that message and add to it. Morning Time is beneficial to everyone no matter their abilities and needs as well.

Meghan and I chat about how Morning Time can help kids with special needs as well as how to meet some of the unique challenges that come with doing Morning Time with special needs kids. It’s a lovely episode.

Pam: This is your morning basket, where we help you bring truth, goodness, and beauty to your home. Hi everyone. And welcome to episode 35 of the, your morning basket podcast. I’m Pam Barnhill, your host, and I am so happy that you are joining me here today. Well, today was a real treat. I got to speak to homeschool mom, Meghan Dempster, all about special needs homeschooling. Now Meghan has a master’s degree in child development from the university of Tennessee and before having her own children, she worked with kids from birth to age three who have special needs since then she has had seven children of her own, and some of those children have special needs as well. So when Meghan reached out to us and volunteered to be on the podcast to talk about doing morning time with special needs kids, we knew we had found the perfect person for the show. I think you’re going to enjoy this one today and Hey, if you don’t have special needs kids, listen anyway, because I picked up a couple of really great ideas that I’m going to use in my own morning time. I hope you enjoy.

Would you like to bring classical music into your children’s lives?
Add classical music to your morning time today with Maestro classics, we have a special coupon code just for your morning. Basket listeners use the code pam@maestroclassics.com to get 17% off even sales prices. These award-winning CDs and MP3s features storytellers Yondu and Jim Weiss accompanied by the world, famous London, Philharmonic orchestra. They performed dozens of titles like Peter and the Wolf, the Nutcracker, and the story of Swan Lake. What makes Maestro classic CD so special is that each one contains an activity book for your children. You can also download free curriculum guides that combine classical music with science, math, geography, and more all sets include tracks, which explain how the music was made the history and stories behind the music information about the instruments and how to practice the learned art of listening.
These recordings were specifically designed to develop listening skills in your children. Visit Maestro classics.com for free shipping on all CDs and also MP3s. They started just $9 and 98 cents. As a why MB listener, you can receive 17% off your order by using coupon code. Pam at checkout, go to www.maestroclassics.com. That’s Maestro spelled M a E S T R O. classics.com where the best classical music curriculum await your homeschool. Meghan Dempster, who has been married to her high school sweetheart for almost 24 years lives with her family on a little farm in East Tennessee prior to staying home, Meghan earned a master’s in child development from the university of Tennessee and worked with children aged birth to three who had special needs. Since that time, she has had seven children of her own three biological and four adopted internationally. And in addition, his grandmother to one delightful eight month old with 17 years of homeschooling under her belt, including meeting the needs of multiple children with a variety of learning challenges. Meghan joins us on this episode of the podcast to talk about Morning Time with kids with special needs.
Meghan, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you. I’m so happy to be here. Well, we are so happy to have you what, let’s start off by you telling me a little bit about your family. Okay. As you mentioned, we have seven children. The youngest is seven years old, and then we have two nine-year-olds a 14 year old, a 16 year old and 19 year old and a 21 year old.
So my two oldest have graduated, which means I’m still schooling five at home.
Okay. And talk to me a little bit about some of the special needs that your kids face.
Sure. As you mentioned, four of our children have been adopted internationally and two of those came to us as older children. So they have learned English as a second language and they also have some attachment issues there.
We have ADHD, we have dyslexia, we have auditory processing, math, disability, and intellectual developmental delays. So we kind of have a wide range.
Okay. Well tell me a little bit about what your morning time looks like right now with your kids. It’s when we sit down to do morning time, I’m going to try to pull in Bible and read aloud and then some art probably send music, some poetry, some Spanish work. We’ll try to play a game or two as well. We might do some history and science. So we just try to round things out through our morning time.
About how long would you say that it is? I aim for an hour, sort of at the minimum, if we have more time, that’s just better, but I aim for an hour. And as I’m getting my stack of books together, I’ll probably grab five or six things because I really only want to spend about 10 or 15 minutes on any one subject. Okay. And so do you do that purposefully.
For some Reason I do with the attention issues we have with some of our children, it just works better for us to kind of keep things moving and just be focused and intentional on that one thing for 10 or 15 minutes, and then we’ll move on to something else. I like to tell the kids, when we sit down what we’re going to be doing, it helps them just with transitions and such to know what to expect what’s going to be coming. And then they’ll sort of know the way it’s going to work that morning. We also, like I said, shoot for about an hour and we will take frequent breaks in there, maybe between subjects or something like that. And do some, probably some physical type activity. Maybe I’ll have him do some log rolls or something like that. Some activities that apply pressure that really helps with kids that have processing issues. So all that together we’ll take right at an hour or maybe more if we have the time.
So you find that it’s not really hard for you to get the kids, to engage with you for an hour or more of morning time, as long as you’re giving them. Let me kind of recap what you said. You give them the agenda. You tell them what they’re going to be studying that day. You keep each subject pretty short, about 10 minutes or less. And then you provide some kind of physical or pressure based activity in between the subjects to give them, I guess, to give them a little break.
Exactly. That helps kind of bring everybody back in, make sure that we’re focused on what we need to be doing. It just seems to work best for us to do it that way. And we don’t a morning time for us is something that they really look forward to. That’s their favorite part of the day.
So it’s not a struggle to get them there. Now, keeping them there. Like I said, I’ve got little tips and tricks that I try to keep going so that we can focus and get done what we need to do, but bringing them together, they look forward to morning time. That’s their favorite part of the day. So everybody’s pretty happy to get started.
I know one of the things that like Charlotte Mason advocates recommend is that when you’re doing multiple subjects in a row that you follow something like kids listening to a read aloud with something like him singing, and then you could follow that with another read aloud. And then you might follow that with, you know, maybe some kind of mathematical thinking. Do you, in addition to your little physical breaks in between, do you try to mix up the subjects in that way, Way as well?
I do. Let me tell you a little bit about the environment while we’re going there to get started. I like to diffuse some oils. My children really love the smell of thieves or peppermint, and I feel like those type things help with their concentration and focus.
I make sure that everybody’s got a comfortable place to sit and comfortable is sort of all relative. That might be on a big rubber bouncy ball, or it might be on a foam roller on the floor. But if somebody needs to be able to move that she’s going to help them to focus a little better. I probably want to make sure that they might have a fidget in their hand, which is something like a squishy rubber ball, or maybe some silly putty or some Lego’s. I also allow them to chew gum or sour candy, all those things help with focus and attention. So I make sure that the environment is there. And then like you said, kind of work in those different type things like we’re sitting now, we’re standing. That kind of thing definitely helps.
And I try to make sure that there’s something for everybody that they’re going to get excited about. So maybe the different learning styles, if I’m thinking through my morning time and I know, wow, I really need something kinesthetic. Maybe we’re going to grab a jump rope and go for our memory verse that day. Cause I know that’s going to work really well for one of my kiddos.
So just trying to keep it mixed up, like you said, make sure that there’s something for everybody that they enjoy and that they excel at.
Oh, that’s awesome. You know, a lot of times I’ll have moms ask me, you know, what do I do to get my kids to enjoy morning, time more? Or what can I do to keep morning time for feeling like just one more thing I have to do. And just for any family member, mom included, I always say have something in morning time that is going to bring delight specifically for each person. And so I love that you’re being conscious about doing that and making sure that there’s something in there for everyone. I think it’s important for mom too. There’s got to be something in there that just kind of reaches out and grabs you and makes you excited about the, you know, the morning time.
Right? And for kids who have some special needs when they are just having to do kind of the same old math and language arts, which are important and we need to do those and be intentional about those things when they get to do the morning time, they, because they enjoyed it. And because they are able to succeed at those things, it really builds their self-confidence and because they look forward to it, I look forward to it. So this is my favorite part of the day as well. This feels like the fun time to me, it doesn’t feel like the drudgery. It feels like, Oh, yay. What are we going to get to do? Because I see the joy and the pleasure that it brings to them.
Yeah. That’s awesome. Well, in the first episode of your morning basket, Cindy Rollins talked about morning time as a way to give all children, even those who might otherwise struggle academically, a rich liberal arts foundation. Do you see that as happening in your home?
I really do. As I mentioned, I think that people tend to focus so much on the math and the language arts.
And if you have somebody that struggles in those areas and they don’t enjoy it and they’re not super successful, when you can bring in all these other things that are rich and that are beautiful, that they enjoy, then you feel like you’re sort of rounding out their education for us. I have some that aren’t going to go to college. So as I’m thinking through,
how am I going to provide them with this great education? That’s well-balanced I love morning time for bringing in the art and the music and the poetry. I look at it like this big meal. So you’ve got your meat and potatoes, which are kind of your math and your language arts, but all these other fun things are the veggies and the fruit and the dessert.
So we get to have this really great meal. That’s satisfying to everybody and very nourishing. And if we didn’t have morning time, if I took that piece out, I just don’t feel like the level of enjoyment or learning would be there.
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about planning you’re dealing with not only a wide age range of kids at your house.
Cause you’re, you’re still homeschooling four, right. But also five. Okay. So even wider, you have a broad spectrum of learning needs there. So talk to me a little bit about how you plan mourning time. Are you aiming for any one particular group?
Well, my oldest is a junior, the oldest one, that’s at home right now.
She’s a junior in high school. So she’s going to join us for Bible and read aloud. And then I let her go because she needs to go do her high school work. So I’m keeping everybody else with me and I’m going to teach to the highest level. So sort of the highest functioning level, if that makes sense. I’m not worried about grades so much because my children, their age doesn’t necessarily match their grades. So I’m teaching to the highest functioning level, knowing that those things are going to trickle down to the younger guys. So I’m not so worried about a grade level as I am more a functioning level. As I mentioned, I try to make sure that we get the different learning styles incorporated, make sure that everybody has something that they enjoy and just really trying to round it out nicely.
If I don’t get to everything one day that’s okay. I know I get to pull it in the next day.
Well, if you’re aiming towards that 14 year old, does that ever cause problems with the seven year old, as far as their behavior goes or their ability to follow along or stay attentive?
Because I mentioned, some of those things that I do environmentally, when we’re doing morning time, like the big bouncy ball or having the fidget in their hand, my seven year old is he is completely happy to literally stand on his head while I’m reading. And I think, okay, if you are able to answer the questions, then we’ll just let you stand on your head. So I try not to get too worried about stuff like that.
When the boys first came home, the older children are from Uganda. And when they first came home school was a whole new thing to them. And so I had to use some type of token or rewards just to get them to focus and attend to what we were doing. So it might’ve been just verbal praise or it might’ve been an M&M maybe a skittle, something like that. So I would keep the sessions very short, very focused. I started more with asking questions instead of having them narrate. But narration is obviously the goal and that’s what we’re working towards. But even with that, instead of saying, “okay, I’m going to read you this chapter and that I want you to tell it back to me.”
We work in very small chunks, maybe just a couple pages. Sometimes I’ll ask my kids, I’ll say, Okay, why don’t you to close your eyes while I read this? And I want you to paint a picture in your mind. Now you can open your eyes. And I want you to tell me the story that I just told you. So just little, little things like that to try to get them to focus and attend. So my seven year olds all in, like I said, if he can stand on his head or two on a piece of spearmint gum or those types of things.
Oh, that’s funny. And I bet he hears every word and it probably drives you crazy.
Say you’re not paying attention and he can completely regurgitate what I just said. So I think, okay, There you go.
Well, when kids have special needs, so often they need extra time and intensive instruction in order to master skills that they’re working on. Sometimes you even had out, you have outside and interventions and things like that, that you have to go, you know, that take your time away from the home.
So in your opinion, what are some of the best reasons for homeschool moms to take time every day to do morning, time in spite of all these other pulls on the time and energy?
Sure. I heard a man. He was a homeschool dad one time. And he was talking about how so often if we have a child that’s struggling in one area, let’s say, they’re not doing well in math. We think, okay, we’re going to, we’re going to add another curriculum and we’re going to get a tutor and we’re gonna really double down. And we’re going to work on this math all the while, knowing that this child is probably not going to have a future as an accountant or something like that.
And he said, instead, if you would spend that time doing something that they really enjoy and that they’re good at their love for learning will increase. So while we have a responsibility to focus on the math and get them to where they need to be, don’t put all that extra time and attention. And so that’s kind of how I do morning time.
That’s just one of the reasons that I do it is because we do struggle in some of those other areas. Morning time feels like the joyful part of the day because it’s building their, self-confidence their sense of accomplishment, they’re going to feel encouraged, which means they’re going to look forward to it. So we’ll, I do understand that some moms feel like, Oh, I just don’t have the time for me. I’m going to prefer morning time to some of those other things. Even if that sounds backwards, I just want my kids to feel encouraged and to feel confident in school and also to really enjoy it and learn something. And for us more of that happens during morning time.
Oh, that’s great. Yeah. I was listening to a podcast the other day with Cindy Rollins. I think it was one of the more recent episodes of the Mason jar. And it was a question and answer episode. And she got the question. If you have to choose between morning time and your academic seat work for the day, which one do you choose? She didn’t even hesitate.
She just said, morning time. That’s you know, and this is a lady who’s graduated eight children. And so she knew right off the bat, that that was the important thing right there.
Right. I had a friend who was telling me we were discussing this not too long ago. And she said that she heard, I think it’s Mr. Hazel from My Father’s World.
And he was talking about how so often we get busy in our day and we’ll drop out Bible or read aloud or something like that for, to focus on the other things. And he said, when you start taking that component out of your day, you’re raising academic pagans. And we went, Ooh, yes, I’m with Cindy. I’m going to choose morning time over the other. And my children too.
Somebody who just tells it like it is there you go. Academic pagans. Okay. Well, let’s talk a little bit about the fruit you’ve seen in morning time with your very diverse group of kids. Have you ever been surprised by something you saw one of your children get out of morning time?
I have been probably most pleased just with their joy of learning. They really get excited about it. And for sure, I see carry over. If we’re doing some memory work, like if we’re working on math facts during morning time, and all of a sudden we get over to math and they’re doing long division and I have one that just the processing of that, it’s just not coming and it might not come like this.
Child’s never going to do higher level math that because we’ve been working on math facts, he has those and he can get to those real quickly and retrieve those. And so he feels better about himself. We don’t have long division, but we can do our times tables. So I see kind of the carry over there. And then I see the joy that it brings to them.
And like I said, their love of learning has really come up. So those are some of the fruit that I’ve seen.
Oh, that’s awesome. You mentioned some of your kids speak English as a second language. So what role have you seen if any, has mourning time played in language acquisition for your kids?
We do so much read aloud during our morning time. So when you have that consistent focus time, it really does help with language acquisition, both their receptive and expressive language. I’ve seen huge improvement in vocabulary, and then you’re going to get the carry over into their writing as well, which is a bonus. I heard a reading specialist named Kristin Echenwiler speak. And she said that listening to a book is as beneficial as reading that book.
So if you have kiddos that aren’t able to read some of those more intense books, but they can listen to it. And then, like I said, they’re building their vocabulary and they’re improving their writing. That’s just huge because while I’m a talker, I don’t know that I want to spend that much time during the day just talk, talk, talking, but I’ll read all day long. So that works out really well. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn’t think of it. That many things to say, I was one of those moms, they said, Oh, just talk to your baby. And I’m like, this feels really silly,
But when you can read a book and then you don’t feel so awkward. So it works.
And I read to my oldest, like from the time she was born, so it worked out great. Well, you know, recently I had Audrey Wilkerson on the program and she had adopted three little girls, you know, adopted internationally. And she really felt like morning time was huge in building kind of their culture as a family, since you’ve adopted internationally. How did morning time, you know, have an effect on your family culture?
Absolutely. I feel like memory-wise my children that have graduated if I asked them their favorite thing that they remember about school. It’s always morning time. It’s everybody piled on the couch, doing those read alouds. And then for the newer kids, it’s really helped with bonding.
Especially with those older children. One of my children had had been with his mother for a long time and she was no longer in their life and he really missed that. But he also came from a culture that didn’t really respect women. So when he came here to the States, he thought, I don’t really need a mom because I’ve already had one. And he didn’t have a whole bunch of respect for women, but then he realized he couldn’t speak English. He couldn’t read. And he did need me. So sitting next to him on the couch day after day, really bonded us after he was here just a little while. And we had been doing some morning time, I was going to a speaking engagement and I was nervous and I was telling my kids about it. And he said, mom, I would like to pray for you. And that just blessed me so much. Cause I thought, okay, this is working this sitting on the couch, reading these books, there’s something to this.
Yeah, that’s awesome. That would be. Sarah Mackenzie would be proud because that’s what she talks about. So often is, you know, bonding with your kids over books. And just to hear that story and how that’s working, you know, that’s worked in your family. That’s really amazing. So yeah, for sure. It’s been a huge blessing for all of us.
You’ve given us some great nuts and bolts kind of ideas already. You know, you’ve talked about the fidgets and breaking up the schedule and things of that nature. Do you have any more specific ways that moms can accommodate their kids’ needs in morning time to help them participate fully?
Sure. For example, if we’re talking about narration, like I said, we did use tokens and rewards that seemed to work really well. Especially initially working in small chunks, maybe starting with questions, maybe not even having them narrate so much as answering questions first, then going to the small chunks, then go into the longer sections. If you have a child that maybe doesn’t have the language skills, for example, those ESL kids, I would sometimes have them act it out. What I just read to them or using even play figures to kind of reenact the story. And then if we were doing memory work, I might take my iPad and videotape my kids, repeating whatever it is, if it’s their verse or their poems so they can watch it. So they’re getting to see themselves and hear themselves. We also used on my telephone, the voice to text, that was something that was helpful because this one child was mispronouncing words, but not able to hear it himself. So when he would see Siri type it out, he could see the mistake and then I would have him go back and correct it. I also have for somebody that struggles with dyslexia, it’s real helpful when you’re trying to memorize math facts and stuff, if they can see the whole problem. So I might have that child be the teacher and they get to hold the flash card that has the problem and the answer on the flashcard.
So when they look at it, they can take a picture of it with their brain. And they’re seeing the whole thing, the same holds true for a poem. I’ll let them hold the manual. And so they’re going to follow along and make sure that their sibling is saying it correctly. So they’re getting to hear it and see it. So it’s kind of going in two different modalities.
We have done something called sky writing, which is just what it sounds like. I’ll have them stand up and you stretch out your arm and your fingers become sort of like your pen. And so if we’re working on letters or maybe punctuation marks, they’re making these really big motions in the air. So they’re getting the crossover of midline, which is just a great brain exercise or a first starting to bring in something like the games.
We might play a game with letter tiles and I’m having them spell different words. And they’re not realizing that they’ve just had their spelling tests. They think they just had a game. If another tip from memory work is something that I think you and I both heard. And that’s where, when you’re working on something, if you can change the speed and the tone, so have him say it slowly, then have them work on it quickly or whisper it and then say it in a big voice as are all little tips that we do during morning time to kind of keep people focused and then also address some of the different learning differences that we have.
Yeah, that’s awesome. I was actually hearing Andrew Kern. Talk about that just last week at the homeschool convention and yeah, apparently it’s a thing. It never occurred to me that if you’re varying the volume or you’re varying the speed of something that you’re reciting back, that it’s actually kind of triggering something in your brain to, Hey, sit up and pay attention to this. This is important. Right. And instead of saying, okay, we’re going to say this three times together.
If they get to whisper it and then they get to shout it. Well, that’s just a game to them. So it’s sort of like a bonus.
Yeah, Yeah, yeah. Especially, yeah. Anytime a kid can shout something. It’s always like, Yeah. My kids, their whole life is a bonus. That’s okay.
Yeah. Oh, that’s awesome. I love all of those ideas and I think there’s something in there for just about everyone. What about disruptions? How do you do you know, I know you said your kids love morning time, but if you ever have a child that’s just really disruptive, how do you handle that?
I usually have to just, it depends on if it’s disrupting to me because I can get easily distracted and I just have to try to focus.
Or if it’s disrupting everybody, if it’s disrupting everybody, then I’m probably going to have to pull that child aside and figure out if there’s a way that I can help them refocus or maybe they just need to take a break. Maybe they just need to put their shoes on and go outside for a little bit, jump on the trampoline and then come back in.
But that’s what I try to have my morning time planned out. I’ve got my stack. And as I said, they know what the plan is, which helps them transition better. So we can just kind of keep moving because everybody’s gonna get distractions or disruptions, as you said. So it’s trying to bring it back in. And like I said, isn’t it mom let’s get, or is it a child? And just trying to figure out how am I going to best help them. Do they need me to get, we have another roller that we use a lot of times and I can roll somebody out or we can play a little game or something like that to kind of pull things back in. Maybe we just need to go outside and jump rope or jump on the trampoline, something like that.
Yeah. Sometimes I find that changing up the venue for morning time is really helpful towards getting there.
Right? And sometimes just coming upstairs and getting a snack or a glass of water, all those things, you know, I think everybody can get tired and hungry and then you can’t focus as well. So just making sure that all those things are attended to will sometimes help us refocus to where we need to be.
Sometimes we get it in our head when we hear somebody talk about morning time and you know, saying, Oh my morning, times an hour or an hour and a half, that it’s an hour and a half of everybody, you know, sitting there very quiet, very still, or, you know, it maybe working on a puzzle or some Legos or something, but really there’s a lot of up and down in that, you know, somebody is typically going to go to the bathroom and come back or everybody, at some point it’s going to come back. You know, there’s going to be a snack. Somebody is going to say, Hey, can I go get a snack? And then everybody’s going to have to go get a snack.
And so there’s a lot of in and out, in, in a morning time session at my house anyway.
Absolutely. We’re the same way. And that’s why I said like, if I have that stack and they know what we’re going to work through, they also know I’m the type mama. We’re not quitting until we’re done. So go get your snack and come back. Cause we’re going to push on. So just knowing that that’s going to happen.
Loving this idea, I have never thought about doing this before, but I can see the value in it because you know, in my brain, typically by the time I sit down to do morning time with my kids, I know exactly what it’s going to look like. Either I’m following a written plan or I’ve, you know, I’ve got a list of, you know, three, five, seven things in my head that I know we’re going to get to during that morning time session, the kids are totally lost. I know what’s going on. They have no idea how long it’s going to be. You know, how long before they can get to their math, you know, how long do they have until they have to do their math. They really have no idea. And so I’m loving this and I’m thinking I may have to start writing out the agenda on a whiteboard so they can see it and, you know, have a good idea of what’s coming next. I could see where that could be helpful in any family.
Well, and if I said to my kids, okay, now it’s your turn to take the dry erase, marker and go over there and wipe off what we just did. That’s getting up, that’s running over there. They love stuff like that. So yes, it does help them. I really think if you have kids that well, I like to know the plan, but for sure kids that have difficult time transitioning, it really helps them as well.
That’s such a great point. Yes, very much so. And then a lot of times I’ll find that, you know, I’m thinking, well, we don’t have a lot of time today. So we’re going to skip the Madlibs and we get to the end of everything I’ve wanted to do.
And then I get where the Madlibs, why are we not doing the mad-libs? I can kind of nip some of that in the bud. There wouldn’t be a big, you know, seven-year-old Throwdown fit about the fact that we’re not doing Madlibs. If I kind of presented it ahead of time, Hey, we’re not going to too bad libs today.
Right. Well, and I said, just even today, I said to him, I’ve got this special game. It was a new game that I got at the homeschool convention. So I said, if we’re able to get through these other things, then that’ll be our fun thing. So let’s focus, let’s finish what we need to do. And then that’ll be the treat at the end.
Well, then they’re all about it because they want to make sure that they can play the game. So, you know, it can sort of be a bait as well.
You are just so sneaky smart. I don’t know about smart, but yet we get it done. Okay. Well, you have said a couple of times how reading aloud has just made such a difference in your kids’ language acquisition and in bonding with your family and things of that nature.
So give me a couple of your favorite read alouds, high interest accessible ones for special needs. Absolutely. Now I am boy handy at our house. We have five boys and two girls. So these tend to appeal a little bit more to probably boys, but the girls have liked him as well. We loved the Ralph Moody Little Britches series. We liked Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls, all the Chronicles of Narnia. There’s a book called Follow My Leader by James B Garfield, that my kids really enjoyed. We like My Side of the Mountain by Jean George, Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare. And then there was one called Across Five Aprils by Irene hunt. I think those would be some of our top picks or at least recently the ones that they would say they remember and really enjoyed.
That’s such a great list. So many good kind of adventure or outdoor books, or, you know, touch of things that boys would really enjoy in that one.
If it has outside a little hunting, something like that, they’re going to be all in.
Great, Great. Well, Meghan, this was so much great information. I really appreciate you taking the time out to chat with me about different ways that we could help all children enjoy and learn from learning time.
Thank you so very much. It was my pleasure. Thank you.
There, you have it. Episode 35 of the, your morning basket podcast. Now, if you would like links to any of the books and resources that Meghan and I chatted about today, you can find them on the show notes for this episode of the podcast that said Pambarnhill.com/YMB35. We’ll have everything linked up for you right there. Also on the show notes page is how to leave a review for the podcast in iTunes, the ratings and reviews you leave in iTunes, help us get word out about the podcast to other listeners. And we really appreciate you taking the time to do that. We’ll be back again in a couple of weeks with another great morning time interview until then keep seeking truth, goodness and beauty in your homeschool.

Links and Resources from Today’s Show

Little Britches SeriesPinLittle Britches SeriesWhere the Red Fern GrowsPinWhere the Red Fern GrowsFollow My LeaderPinFollow My LeaderThe Chronicles of Narnia Box SetPinThe Chronicles of Narnia Box SetMy Side of the MountainPinMy Side of the MountainThe Sign of the BeaverPinThe Sign of the BeaverAcross Five AprilsPinAcross Five Aprils

 

Key Ideas about Specials Needs and Morning Time

  • Morning Time can work well for children with a variety of special needs. Some tips for helping students move through Morning Time seamlessly is to give them a clear picture of all that will be covered, setting a comfortable environment for everyone and giving a wide variety of subjects where everyone has something they enjoy.
  • It can be easy to put Morning Time on the back burner, but it is absolutely worth it to make it is a priority. Morning Time is the opportunity to give students a full serving of all the richest ideas that nourish their hearts and minds.
  • Some tips for accommodating special needs in Morning Time include taking smaller chunks for narration and working up to larger sections. Allowing students to act out or use figures to reenact the story can also be helpful. For memory work it may be easier for the child to have the material presented in a variety of ways like visually and audibly.

Find What you Want to Hear

  • 3:00 Meet Meghan Dempster
  • 4:41 Morning Time in Meghan’s home
  • 10:22 Morning Time for a liberal arts education
  • 11:38 planning for a wide range of ages
  • 14:40 a case for making Morning Time a top priority
  • 17:34 the fruits of Morning Time
  • 19:57 Morning Time and family culture
  • 21:42 tips for accommodating kids with special needs in Morning Time
  • 25:15 handling disruption
  • 29:56 Meghan’s favorite read-alouds
Pin

Leave a Rating or Review

Doing so helps me get the word out about the podcast. iTunes bases their search results on positive ratings, so it really is a blessing — and it’s easy!

  1. Click on this link to go to the podcast main page.
  2. Click on Listen on Apple Podcasts under the podcast name.
  3. Once your iTunes has launched and you are on the podcast page, click on Ratings and Review under the podcast name. There you can leave either or both! 

Thanks for Your Reviews