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Lazy Genius Your Homeschool–Principle #9 Batch It

It’s not often that I feel like I’m really nailing it in my homeschool. We have lots of very good days, but my eye tends to see lack instead of fulness. So I was pleasantly surprised to hear what Andrew Pudewa says are the two most important pieces in developing readers + writers–reading aloud and memorization. Yep–nailed it! We have a rich read aloud culture here and our learning is soaked in good words.

Morning Time is our favorite way to batch in our homeschool! We begin our day with prayer, sing a hymn and read scripture, then we read a poem.

This is what many would call memory work, but I think of this time more expansively. It’s not quiz material, but rather a liturgy for learning. This is what sets the tone and puts our feet on the path. The goodness comes not in rattling off something for the grandparents, but in actually hearing the scripture day by day. It’s reading the same poem over a month that hides it in our hearts. These good words become a part of us!

How do I chose what we will use? That’s very much connected to the seasons…and to what I want or need to hear just then. I am one of the participants too and these good words do their work on me too. (I have it in mind to share the Morning Time printables that I create each month, but space for that project hasn’t magically materialized.)

This year we are singing hymns from the Trinity Hymnal (with accompaniment from Small Church Music), reading lots of psalms and scripture from the late summer lectionary, and memorizing some Shakespeare, some Frost, some Dickinson, and some Ursula K. LeGuin. I bet I could count on one hand the number of kids learning Ursula’s poems in school, and three of them live at my house.

Yes, this list is very idiosyncratic. This is not the 10 Most Important Things to Memorize. These selections arise organically out of our own family genius! I’d love to hear what you are putting in your heart.

If you are new to The Lazy Genius, here’s the Starter Kit! 20 episodes that will get you energized and moving in the right direction!

And you can find all the posts in this series right here.

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2 Comments

  1. My favorite post in the Lazy Genius Your Homeschool series is “Living in season”. It really resonated with me, and is such a great reminder that seasons are supposed to change in their time. I do myself no good trying to stay in a season I’m not meant to be in, or move into something when it’s not time. I definitely don’t need nor do I want to try and make someone else’s season happen in my life when there is so much good for me right where I’m at.

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