Morning Time Plans for Teens: A Year With Lewis & Tolkien
Your morning time doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t) end just because your kids get older! I know I certainly didn’t want to stop it with my own kids. The teen years are the best for wonderful discussion times and making sure that your kids have the solid grounding that you’ll want them to have before they leave home. That’s why I’ve created some morning time plans for teens called Morning Time Teens™!
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Morning Time Teens™: A Year With Lewis & Tolkien
The first in the Morning Time Teens™ series will be one that I’m doing with my own teens in middle and high school (ages 12, 14, and 16) during the 2022-2023 year: A Year With Lewis & Tolkien.
This course will provide you with a plan to follow where you’ll read all seven Chronicles of Narnia books, The Hobbit, and all of The Lord of the Rings books in one school year.
It includes the schedule, discussion questions, and other activities to do alongside your read-aloud time.
Morning time is when a homeschool family gathers all the kids together to do group activities such as read-alouds, projects, memorization, music, art, poetry tea time, presentations for each other, etc., before the kids head off to do independent work. It’s also known as circle time, couch time, morning basket time, and other names.
Since most morning time lesson plans focus mainly on the elementary ages, I wanted to create something meatier for my teenagers, to make their last years in our homeschool meaningful. I plan to create others, but the first in the series is A Year With Lewis & Tolkien.
My Basic Morning Time Plans for Teens This Year
We start our day each morning in the living room at 9am sharp. I discovered a couple of years ago that having a specific starting time like this, with a consequence of an extra chore per minute you’re late — including for me if I’m late — helped us start on time almost every day!
I do morning time with all my kids together, grades 5th, 7th, 9th, and 10th. (My 12th grader will be at cosmetology school every morning, so she can’t join us).
Here’s our one-hour morning time for teens daily plan:
Monday:Writing (each student reads their paper of the week and I assign the next one)
Tuesday:Philosophy (read aloud/discuss)
Wednesday:Art (share their work and assign the next one; they’ll do the project independently)
Thursday:Music (listen to the music lesson of the week)
Friday:Tea Time or Celebration recipes with Literature Discussion
Bible
During our 10-minute time focused on Bible each morning, we’ll be doing the following:
Overview of the Old Testament books and memorize one verse from each book (one each week).
A Gentle Advent – Further Up, Further In! This Advent course is geared for middle grades and high school and utilizes literature selections from The Silver Chair, The Last Battle, poetry, music, art, handicrafts, recipes, and focuses on the coming Advent of Jesus as King.
Discussion Days with Celebration Tea Times (Food!)
These are based on poetry tea times that are so popular in homeschool circles today. We will plan on a British-type tea time at the conclusion of each of the 11 books– with foods mentioned in the book we just finished reading! There are lots of recipes you can search online, such as Mr. Tumnus’s Tea Time Toast.
The daily video and discussion will take place after the hour morning time is complete. Then, they’ll head off to do independent work, and I’ll meet with my 5th and 7th grader to do their history.
I have shared in this blog post other resources that I will be using with my kids this year (such as the writing curricula and the book for philosophy), but those are optional.
How long should morning time with your teens be each morning?
To use A Year With Lewis & Tolkien you should plan for an hour each day, 5 days a week, 36 weeks for the school year. This will allow for 30-45 minutes of reading aloud of the book (or listening to the audiobook) and companion activities.
Books for Homeschool Moms to Encourage You in Reading Aloud
Here are two books I highly recommend if reading aloud is something new you’re exploring for your homeschool:
