YMB #149 Why We Don’t Make High School Morning Time Plans

Pam Barnhill [00:00:04]:
Are you ready for homeschooling to feel joyful again? Do you wanna build closer relationships, remove some of the stress around planning, and enjoy learning with your children? Welcome to your morning basket. I’m Pam Barnhill, a homeschool mom just like you. And I’m going to show you the magic and fulfillment that morning basket or morning time can bring to your homeschool. Grab your coffee or tea and let’s get started. Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Your Morning Basket podcast. I’m so happy you’re joining us. And today, I am also joined by our community manager, miss Dawn Garrett, and also our member success manager, miss Laney Homan. Ladies, welcome.

Dawn Garrett [00:00:56]:
Hi. Always glad to be here. Hello.

Pam Barnhill [00:00:58]:
Always so good to have you here. Okay. Real quick, just in case somebody doesn’t know you, a one minute intro and kind of, like, how many and the ages of the kids you’re homeschooling. So Dawn?

Dawn Garrett [00:01:10]:
I’m Dawn Garrett. I’ve been married to Jason for 23 years. We have 3 kids, 1 homeschool graduate, 1 dueling enrollment senior, and 1 homeschool senior. Homeschool senior? Well, my my senior is is full time dual enrolling. Okay.

Pam Barnhill [00:01:29]:
What and so the next one down is a Is a junior. Junior. Okay. Maybe I just miss her. Okay. A junior. I was like, boy, she, like, bumped up after the start of the new year. Alright.

Pam Barnhill [00:01:42]:
Laney, what about you?

Laney Homan [00:01:44]:
I am Laney Homan. I’ve been married to Sean for 27 years. And I have we have 8 kids. Four oldest kids are done with my homeschool and I’m homeschooling the youngest 4. I have a 13 year old, an 11 year old, a 10 year old, and an 8 year old. And we’re still we got a lot of years left ahead of us.

Pam Barnhill [00:02:05]:
Still plugging away plugging away. Well, I am Pam Barnhill, and I have 3 kids. 1 of whom has graduated from my home school, and then I am at home with a junior and 8th grader. I’m fairly certain. He’s 14.

Dawn Garrett [00:02:23]:
It’s it’s like asking your kids, what grade are you in?

Pam Barnhill [00:02:26]:
I always have to stop and think about it. I always have to stop and think about it. Actually, so it’s so funny. I was driving John home from work last night, and he was talking about one of his friends. He was like, this friend’s graduating this year and this friend’s graduating next year. I’m like, you realize you’re graduating next year. Right? He’s like, oh, I am? So, yeah, totally all the time here.

Laney Homan [00:02:47]:
Yeah. And we actually do not assign a grade, an official grade until I feel like they’re ready for high school. We kind of we kind of, like, assess where they are maturity wise and academic wise. And then it usually becomes very, very clear in those kind of junior high years. And then we say, okay. It’s official. You’re in 9th grade this year. And then we move forward from here.

Dawn Garrett [00:03:11]:
We always just told everybody they just wanna know how old you are, and they can only know that by what grade you’re in. So it’s just the whatever age you would have been, that’s the grade you tell people. That’s all they care about.

Pam Barnhill [00:03:23]:
That’s what we did. But I’m kinda liking Laney’s way. Yeah. Yeah. That we may have to record a 10 minutes to a better homeschool podcast about that because that’s that’s an interesting concept. So okay. But not to get derailed, so all of us either have high schoolers or have had high schoolers in the past, and the question we’re discussing today is one that we get quite a bit here at at your morning basket, and that is why do you guys not create morning time plans for high school? Why are there no high school morning time plans? And so, Dawn, you get this question a lot. What do you tell people?

Dawn Garrett [00:04:01]:
Mostly, I tell people, at least partially we don’t, because our moms tell us how much they learn from doing the plans and that they are just blown away by how many different things that they have never studied, never gotten to think about. And they’re like, this is what I’ve been missing out on. So if our moms are like that, then their teens could be still learning. Right? So that’s that’s usually my response.

Pam Barnhill [00:04:33]:
Yeah. And I think that’s huge. I think that’s probably the biggest thing that we’re going to say today is when you look at the morning time plans themselves and you look at the content that’s in there, whether that be our explorations or our seasonal sets of plans or history sets of plans or anything like that, the topics that are in there, I’m like, wow. This is amazing. I never knew this. I’m learning something new all the time. I am way older than a high school student, y’all. And so I’m like, if it’s good enough for me, then it’s certainly good enough for my high schooler to learn from.

Pam Barnhill [00:05:12]:
Right?

Dawn Garrett [00:05:13]:
Absolutely. I think

Laney Homan [00:05:15]:
that’s that’s what I tell people all the time. And I’m all I’m constantly just getting excited about, like, the things that I’m learning about. And so even my kids that maybe are a little reluctant sometimes for, really, is this age appropriate for me? I’m like, I just learned this really cool thing. I find myself constantly telling my husband about all the cool facts that I learned in the different, you know, sets of plans or from the explorations and those kinds of resources that we’re using from your morning basket plus. Because every day I’m looking at new artwork. I’m listening to new poetry. I’m hearing a new story. I’m hearing maybe I love the picture books.

Laney Homan [00:06:01]:
And so a lot of times we hear people constantly saying like, well, our picture book’s not good for my high schoolers. And we’ve talked about that. You’ve had a whole podcast episodes before about picture books being great for high schoolers. One of the things that I’m constantly telling moms about the picture books is by the time our kids get into high school, they have a lot of reading to do. In their own individual subjects, they spend a lot of time diving deeply into their academic subjects and they they have limited time to explore maybe quite as much literature or other types of things. So if we give them what some people would consider age appropriate reading for all of the things, then there is a limited capacity of what they can actually experience because they may not have time to read a lengthy book on a particular person or a particular event. However, the picture books really give them a great in-depth study of these little events throughout history that they would not encounter in traditional morning time settings or, I’m sorry, in traditional, like, curriculum that they would use. So an example of this, I actually was just telling the ladies about this book the other day, and that is there’s a book called 21 Elephants and Still Standing that you will find in our engineering explorations.

Laney Homan [00:07:36]:
And it is a story of the Brooklyn Bridge and how some people did not trust this bridge because it was a suspension bridge and it was really a scary concept to them. And they did not think that it was going to be, you know, sturdy enough and engineered well enough for people to cross it. And PT Barnum actually marches 21 elephants over the bridge to show that it is actually a stable structure that people can trust and use. And then people were more open to actually using the Brooklyn Bridge. And that is a story that my kids would not have encountered in their

Pam Barnhill [00:08:13]:
In a textbook or even

Laney Homan [00:08:16]:
Exactly. And I find so many examples of things like that where I’m like, oh my goodness. I didn’t know this. And I find all of those little experiences that I’m learning through come from a lot of the picture books that are listed in the resources. And the same thing is true for, you know, just the, like, big ideas and concepts that they encounter, and it gives them little things to make connections with with their other subjects that they’re studying. And all of these types of things are already in the plans that we have written and that we have available.

Dawn Garrett [00:08:55]:
For sure. But even beyond like those historical and people kinds of things, I don’t know about you. I had an art history class in college, and I really liked it. I was a history ed major and the art history class, it was interesting and I learned a lot. But seeing the motion how art kind of followed the philosophy and the ideas of the day and how diff how that affects art and music and science and the way that, that people perceive their world. Having the exposure to these great artists and this great music that are included in the plans and done in studied in morning time. Those pieces are a valuable aid in helping us to love art and music, which is certainly really important, but also understanding the world as it was constituted during a certain period. And, you know, why have you seen have you seen Picasso? You’ve seen a Picasso painting.

Dawn Garrett [00:10:06]:
It looks like a mess on a screen. Have you ever seen his drawings before he started doing Cubism? He was incredibly talented and and very realistic and just stunning stunning. But he did cubism for a reason. What was that reason? How do you how do you get from these sketch drawings that were just that I I like his sketch drawings better than I do the cubism, but he was trying to do something with that. And by studying the art history and the art that is available to us, all of that makes a huge difference in our children’s understanding of the world that that they live in.

Pam Barnhill [00:10:49]:
Yeah. I agree. And and so they’re gonna be able to start making those connections between what they’re seeing in morning time and what they’re studying in other areas, you know, and so it is vitally important. And so you guys touched on so many things that I wanna make sure that we go back and kind of, like, reiterate and touch on again. And so first of all, this idea of picture books, and I I wanna just park here for a little bit. Laney mentioned that we’ve done some other podcast on picture books. I know that I’ve talked to Jessica Lawton about some of the philosophy behind the picture books that we’ve used in the plans that she wrote, and then we’ve also had Sarah Mackenzie on to talk about the you know, how picture books are valuable even for older students. And, you know, this is so true.

Pam Barnhill [00:11:37]:
It you know, the syntax and language of picture books is written at a much higher level because they expect them to be read aloud. And I love Laney’s point about your kids aren’t gonna get that information anywhere else. Right? So they’re gonna they’re gonna miss the story of PT Barnum and the Brooklyn Bridge, but you can read it in a picture book. It takes you 10 or 15 minutes, and they enjoy that in morning time. And and then they’ve learned something new. They’ve learned something interesting and new and probably something that hooks them in a little bit more to that whole Brooklyn Bridge story, but they didn’t have time to read a whole long book on this, and I think that’s such a valid point that Laney made. But let’s take this. Okay.

Pam Barnhill [00:12:20]:
Great. Picture books. Let’s put that aside. Can you do the plans we’ve written without using the picture books at all?

Laney Homan [00:12:29]:
A 100%. There are lots of times whenever we just do the activities and we don’t have the books. And maybe that’s because I didn’t find them in the library or because of our time constraints or because I decided that, you know, for this child in high school that this is, like I said, this is just what we’re gonna cover, but we still the activities, the videos, the different things that are linked in the plans are so rich. And like Dawn was talking about, you know, we’ve got the picture study. We’ve got poetry. All of these things are happening without picture books. They’re just you know, that’s just a way to kind of, like, really fill the plans out even more than they already are. But the other thing for our high schoolers and, like, our older students, we have level up activities inside some of the plans.

Laney Homan [00:13:18]:
The explorations all have level up activities, so it might give you a short activity to do, and then there might be a link to a video that gives you some more information about that. Or it might give you, you know, kind of a prompt of with some questions to think about at kind of a deeper thinking level. And then I think it’s our seasonal 3 point o plans that also have level up activities in those as well. But I think that ultimately the material inside of any of the resources that we provide through membership or in our shop really are just appropriate for all ages because of the thing that

Laney Homan [00:14:01]:
we were talking about before, and that is how I’m constantly amazed at when I’m learning something, I should not shortchange my child to think that it’s too too young for them. And I think that that is just really a key, a key point that we can model that through engaging with material that maybe they might have looked at and thought, well, I don’t wanna do this because it does seem like it’s too young for me. And then when we can engage that modeling and expose ourselves to these new ideas through the morning time, then that really helps our kids to see that learning is not just something that happens in an academic textbook. It is not something that just happens for my school years. It is something that continues to happen my whole life. And it’s not only about the particular things that I have a need for knowledge for. But like Dawn was saying, it’s just exposing myself to a richness and a beauty that is going to give me more information about our world and allow me to connect ideas that I wouldn’t have otherwise connected because they hadn’t been exposed to it.

Pam Barnhill [00:15:23]:
Yeah. I would I would say, if I had to guess, I would say that a lot of times, if somebody were to come in, let’s say, download our sample month of morning time plans, where they’re gonna get hung up with using that set of plans with a high schooler is probably the picture books. Now we also do we also usually in a set of plans, whether it be explorations or a regular set of plans, there’s usually some math in there, and we call that, like, beauty and mathematics. And these are going to be activities that are more geared towards elementary students. Though sometimes we’ll use a bedtime math activity, and some of those upper level bedtime math activities can be a little challenging for a high school student too. But, you know, other than, I would say, just thinking about the plans themselves most everything else in there, the nature study, even the art could be, you know, put the art activity in front of a high schooler and have them take part in that. They’re going to do the art at their level of ability like a mom would do the art at her level of ability. I I think that typically, probably the math and the picture books are the places where people get stuck.

Dawn Garrett [00:16:38]:
And yet with, like, the math, I know at least one set of plans goes through the Fibonacci sequence. I didn’t learn about the Fibonacci sequence until I was an adult, an adult homeschooling my children, honestly. There are really beautiful math concepts, and some of the some of those math concepts that are in the plans are things that, yes, they might be aimed for a a an elementary student, but a team can actually think through them on a different level and in a different way just like the art projects. It there is differentiation based on each individual in your morning time, also in the age ranges of your morning time, how you’re gonna solve this problem this way, your 8 year old brother is gonna solve it this way. Why is there that difference? There just is. You have greater life, experience. You you have learned more math. You can solve it maybe in a faster way, but he can still solve it.

Dawn Garrett [00:17:44]:
Right? So there’s there’s some value in seeing that too. Yeah.

Pam Barnhill [00:17:47]:
And there’s definitely more than one way to solve a math problem a lot of times. So and, yeah, I had totally forgotten about the Fibonacci sequence and there are there are some really great math concepts, tessellations, symmetry, all kinds of different things in those plans that that could be experienced at a higher level. So shame on me. Hi, friends. I’m interrupting this episode to let you know that we took all the hard work out of planning morning time. Our morning time plans are designed for ease of use for new morning time moms and veterans alike. You can bring beauty and fun to your homeschool with our easy to use guides. In fact, you can get a free month of morning time today.

Pam Barnhill [00:18:30]:
Head to the link in our show notes to get started with your free morning time sample.

Laney Homan [00:18:38]:
I think though that you’re hitting something that’s really important there, Pam. And that is we have certain perceptions of information. And we we categorize it as being age appropriate or not age appropriate. But we and because of that, we often don’t present our child with something that would be really beautiful and beneficial to their education because we have categorized it in a particular way. And I think that using the morning time plans last year, I used the morning time plans and our explorations with my senior in high school all the way down to my 7 year old. And I did not vary the activities for my senior daughter. She in them. She was right there doing the same art activity that the 7 year old was doing.

Laney Homan [00:19:25]:
She was listening to the same books. We were watching the same videos. And, again, I think it just it the nature study, those kinds of things. So, yes, my my artistic senior in high school was able to create something for her nature put study pages that was, you know, quite a different level than my 7 year old. But it was giving them in the family a connection point because they were studying the same things. They could have dialogue and conversation about ideas that are bigger than themselves. I mean, there’s just so much value in not assessing an appropriate age to certain activities.

Dawn Garrett [00:20:08]:
Yeah. I think I think one of the issues, though, Laney, that comes out of that is okay. Great. But you already mentioned that high schoolers have so much to read and so much to do. How do I make morning time count for my high schoolers if we’re doing picture books and the art project that the 7 year old is doing? And how how how can that actually count toward what they’re doing? And, you know, the easy math the bedtime math problem, how does that count for their day and not just add on to their day? Well, in order go ahead, Pam.

Pam Barnhill [00:20:43]:
Well, the only thing I was gonna say is, you know, we’ve had multiple conversations. So I we will link some high school conversations that we’ve had on the podcast before about that very thing. I’m gonna let Laney come kinda come in and address it real quick here, but but we have had entire conversations about how can you count what you’re doing for morning time, you know, for your high school transcript and and things like that. And I we always do acknowledge the fact that for some high schoolers, you know, if you have a high schooler who’s taking a ton of outside classes, either, you know, virtually through video classes or by going to dual enroll or something like your oldest is, Dawn, you’re definitely going to adjust what they’re doing for morning time. You know? And we’ve talked about that before outside of the scope of this particular podcast is, which is why we’re not writing high school morning time plans. But, Laney, go ahead and address. How were you able to count some of that for high school?

Laney Homan [00:21:43]:
Well, so we and you’ve heard me talk in previous podcasts about how we started morning time with high schoolers. So from the very beginning, I’ve always planned what I do in high in morning time around my high schooler. So if we’re covering picture study and art projects, those projects that they’re doing, the time that they spend doing that is going towards their fine arts credit for the year. Mhmm. So I’m not they might have a little bit more to do outside of morning time to build upon that credit to kind of round it out, but they’re not doing, like, an entirely separate curriculum on those things. So that Mhmm. The building of the pieces of our morning time kinda break out into counting towards different subjects that they’re doing. So same thing, if we’re, you know, covering history topics and concepts, that’s actually one of the ways that I, was able to do that in our morning time was then my high schooler’s history curriculum looks very much like listening to what we’re doing in morning time, engaging with those ideas and things that we’ve done, and then picking things that they’re interested in to dive deeper in their individual studies, but without necessarily giving them a full separate curriculum to do that with.

Laney Homan [00:23:13]:
If they’re participating in everything that we’re doing for, you know, what counts as all of my younger children’s history, say. The the high schooler would then take that and then they would expand upon it, and then they would probably have, like, a reading list or things. But when I am when I have a high schooler, this is the 1st year, and I really cannot even tell you how many years that I have not had a high schooler. And next year, he’ll be in high school. So.

Pam Barnhill [00:23:38]:
You got a one-year break.

Dawn Garrett [00:23:39]:
You got a one-year break.

Laney Homan [00:23:41]:
But it’s I plan our morning time resources based upon what credits and things I need for my kids to have in high school. And then I kind of section that out. So it is a thought it is a thought about process for sure. But then the day to day execution of that is simply that these resources that I have fallen in love with using for my younger kids, I am quite capable of carrying across and using for the older kids as well. It does not be

Dawn Garrett [00:24:11]:
a separate thing. And sometimes there’s just that boost that of excitement and interest when you’ve done something from the plans that just leads into the rest of the day. Right? So

Pam Barnhill [00:24:26]:
Yeah. Yeah. And ladies talked another podcast about how she’s used this kind of project based learning with her older kids. Not all of them though. That’s the other thing you’ve been very clear about is this works really well for some kids and not as well for other kids. And so I could totally see doing stuff together in morning time and then taking the older kid and saying, okay. Here’s your spine. You now and and we actually did this last year with history for Olivia.

Pam Barnhill [00:24:54]:
We were reading some things together as a family in morning time, and then she particularly had other reading outside, and she was just not interested in doing the whole project based thing. She was very happy for me to say, here’s your reading list. I had it broken up into task cards. You know, we have our team task card class that shows how I did that, and then she would go over there and finish her task card in addition to what we had done together in morning time. So sometimes the project based stuff works great. Sometimes, you know, the kid needs a little extra.

Dawn Garrett [00:25:24]:
Well, and that’s the thing

Laney Homan [00:25:26]:
With my 8th grader. We are kind of experimenting with I really loved the results of how much my daughter engaged with the materials on the that we were covering in morning time outside of morning time and how she really broadened her own exposure and information on those things. And not all of my kids are going to be self driven in that way or, you know, they’re gonna kind of cut corners and things. So I have begun to kind of experiment in that with my 8th grader and that’s that well, we’ve talked about this in morning time. So then I might say, you know, choose one of these 3 books that you’re now going to read or something, but it’s it’s less open ended and more specific. I am giving assignments. But, again, it’s a carryover of what we’ve been covering. So he is actually the one that last summer as I was sitting down to do my school planning was like, I really wanna study the Vikings this year, mom.

Laney Homan [00:26:28]:
And I was like, okay. So the Vikings went into our morning time. It was the first thing. Like, we have spent almost an entire semester diving into the Vikings and culture and their mythology and other things. But what I did was I just pulled the middle ages morning time plans out, and then we’re kind of going through those slowly. We put heavy emphasis on the Vikings, but then, you know, that particular son who expressed that interest, he has some very specific assigned things that he’s doing to kind of further that along. So I got his input in what we wanted to cover, but he doesn’t really have maybe the maturity and part of it is just the drive and the, like, executive function skills to be able to pull together a project on his own. So for me to say, like, okay.

Laney Homan [00:27:22]:
Well, now you’re gonna take this book, and it’s going to expand upon these ideas. And he’ll have to read that because it’s at a much lever a higher level than what, say, my 8 year old this year is going to be interested in listening to.

Pam Barnhill [00:27:36]:
So you were able to use the materials in those morning time plans, and and I’m assuming you read some of the picture books and things like that, and he was there for that, enjoyed some of that, and then he’s going to have that additional material. And and I just wanna point out, this is Laney who is very adept at taking morning time and then we’re building off of that. And Laney can show you how to do that. We show you how to do that. We can help you do that in your morning basket. But if you’re not, you can still use the plans. And so, Dawn, I wanted to point on bring back around to a topic that you had addressed earlier when we were talking about what are we gonna talk about today? And that was how the explorations are a great way to bring some of these truth, goodness, and beauty topics into your homeschool, and yet still leave you time for other things. So talk a shot.

Dawn Garrett [00:28:30]:
For sure. So using the explorations, they are great plans. They have really interesting things and but they leave you time to pull in your own, say, theology. If you wanted to do apologetics with your upper ear high schoolers, if you wanted to do a deeper dive into poetry, because that’s what your high schooler loved and, and pull in other resources into morning time. This still gives you kind of that structure and the ongoing interesting topic that you might not get a chance to study elsewhere, but it leaves you time to, to, to add the things that are important to your family. One of the things with the explorations is that you get a text message every day if you’re a YNB plus member, And so that’s how I’ve called in Explorations in the past was we do the things that we’re we’re gonna do in our morning time. And then at the end, we get the text and we do whatever the text is. We did something with bugs.

Dawn Garrett [00:29:37]:
I remember one day we watched a video about bugs and I think it was butterflies. And my daughter loves has loved butterflies since she was very small. And, like, she still sees butterfly dresses, and I’m like, oh, I want that. This is my gap year, my graduate. But, Sahut, like, she we were able to pull it that in and enjoy doing the activity from the exploration because the text just showed up and I didn’t have to do any prep. I didn’t have to do any, like, planning. It just showed up. I just opened my phone and we did it.

Dawn Garrett [00:30:12]:
And that was a great way to really supplement and add that little spark of joy and excitement to our day.

Pam Barnhill [00:30:19]:
So one of the things I love about this. So first of all, I will just say when Dawn opened up that text and said, I didn’t have to do any prep. I didn’t have to do any planning. I would say that’s true for probably 80 to 85% of the text that come. There there’s probably some project in there that would require some, you know, art supplies or something, and Dawn’s just gonna skip over that text. She might hand it to a kid to do 2 by themselves if they want to, but I knowing Dawn and knowing me, I’m just gonna say, oh, yeah. We’re not doing that one today, and we’re gonna miss it. But the other thing I love about using this method, whether you just have high schoolers like Dawn and I do, or you have, you know, younger kids and high schoolers is the explorations always include the same subjects and I’m putting subjects in air quotes, but they always include art.

Pam Barnhill [00:31:08]:
They always include music appreciation. They always include picture study. They always include mathematics. They always include jokes and riddles, which are just fun. You know? They always include something about science or nature study. And so you have that framework that’s coming, you know, either you open up the app or you go, you know, you get the text on your phone, you have that framework that’s always there And and you can, whether you just have high school kids, you can enjoy those things. Or if you have a wide age range, you can do it with all of them. And I just love that that framework is built in for you.

Pam Barnhill [00:31:45]:
And so you’re like, how do I fit in picture study? How do I fit in nature study? How do I fit in music appreciation? It’s coming to your phone, and and you could just do it from there. And the topics are cool. I mean, as we’re recording this this month, we have engineering. Next month, we have presidents. 2 very serious topics. I don’t know that we normally do, like, such serious topics back to back. But I think March is bees and honey, so that’ll

Laney Homan [00:32:13]:
I think the other thing too is is that it does not have to be something that’s long and elaborate and added to your day to take up a lot of time. It is perfectly acceptable to just have a connection point in your day that is, you know, 10, 15 minutes long. The explorations are perfect for that. Even some of the full plan sets that we have are perfect for that because it’s all done for you, and you really do just have to, like, kinda open it and go. So even if you do have high schoolers with, you know, other curriculum that is like a full a full schedule, I think the important thing, and we’ve talked about this again in in other episodes, is just that when our high schoolers when they get to be that age, they’re busy. And it isn’t very easy to lose connection with those kids because they have so many different things going on. It is so important for them to be able to kinda have that touch point. And when you have a scheduled time to sit down with them, even if it is only for 15 minutes a day to actually connect and look at something fun.

Laney Homan [00:33:19]:
And it’s not always, like, instruction time, if that makes sense.

Dawn Garrett [00:33:24]:
Yeah. Mhmm.

Laney Homan [00:33:25]:
I like having points in my day where I know I’m just gonna do something enjoyable or interesting with my kid, and we’re gonna learn together rather than it always being mom needs to communicate x piece of information to you. Sometimes if we’re not doing morning time in our busy schedules, that’s the kind of relationship that gets pushed to the side, I guess. Yep. And so then it’s communication for information for living sake rather than just enjoying something together.

Pam Barnhill [00:33:53]:
Love it.

Dawn Garrett [00:33:54]:
Yeah. With with my upper graders, morning time is the only time I teach anymore. Like, they come to me for other things, but pretty much that’s the only full time full on connection where I am actively engaged in the learning with them. And it’s it’s such a valuable thing.

Pam Barnhill [00:34:11]:
Yeah. Yeah. But back back to we get so far off into this. Guys, if you haven’t discovered this yet, we’re so passionate about still doing morning time with your high schoolers even when they’re high schoolers. But back to this why don’t we create morning time plans specifically for high school? And I think because so many of our families I mean, let’s just get down to the brass tacks of of, you know, we have to market what we sell, So many of our families still have that wide age range, so very few families. Maybe we’re moving into that, but where we have more and more, but I I I think the nature of morning time changes. I think for a lot of our families who only have high schoolers like Dawn, there’s so much going on and so much you very specifically want to do in your morning time. The explorations are enough.

Pam Barnhill [00:35:06]:
Just having those little having the little touch points of things, that little framework is enough. But then so many of the rest of our families still have kids all the way down to elementary school that they’re trying to mesh with high schoolers. So it doesn’t make sense for us to write morning time plans just for high schoolers. We need morning time plans that are good for the whole family, and I think what we have done that.

Dawn Garrett [00:35:26]:
Yeah. I agree. Yeah. I was gonna say, the answer is to why we don’t make morning time plans for high schoolers is because we don’t think that we need to. Yeah. We think we kind of already have.

Pam Barnhill [00:35:39]:
Yeah. I think that’s

Laney Homan [00:35:39]:
the key. I think that what we have is sufficient for everyone, whether it is for only high schoolers or a family that has only young kids or a family that has a wide age range of people. Even if you have only young children in your home, you are still a part of your morning time, and therefore, you have a wide age range of people. So, essentially, every set of morning time plans that we have is hitting an older student target because it’s either a mom or an actual older, you know, child that’s still in school.

Pam Barnhill [00:36:17]:
And nobody’s done this yet, but there was one point years ago, Dawn, where we were talking about how cool would it be if somebody would take a set of morning time plans into a nursing home and do morning time with nursing home residents? Like, how cool and awesome would that be for those nursing home residents? Like and any set of our morning time plans could be pulled out and taken to a nursing home and used with nursing home residents and just be a blessing to to them. You know? Mhmm.

Dawn Garrett [00:36:53]:
Got it. I wonder I wonder how many of them would remember the poetry that was included in like, great. Because our generation and Laney, Pam and I are all relatively close to the same age. Our generation didn’t get poetry and poetry memorization, but our grandparents’ generation and our parents’ generation did. So that would be interesting to see.

Pam Barnhill [00:37:15]:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s another project for me today. Yeah. But it would totally be appropriate just to take these plates once, I think, once you strip away, and and we’ve already said it in this episode, you don’t have to completely strip away the picture books. But if that’s the place where you’re getting hung up, right, strip away the picture books, leave the content that’s there, and I think you would see that that that those plans are perfectly appropriate for all different ages. So if you haven’t looked at the morning time plans lately, do come over. We’ve got the free month of morning time morning time plans.

Pam Barnhill [00:37:54]:
Download those, have a look at them, see if that’s something that you would like. We have multiple sets of morning time plans in the shop. We do have the membership where you get one free set of morning time plans to keep every quarter. If you’re an annual member, we throw in a bonus 5th one, and the explorations every month, including you can sign up for those daily tests. So Mhmm. Yeah. So much so much goodness there that you could use with all ages. So if you have some kids, you’re like, oh, maybe they’re aging out of this, We assure you, they are not.

Laney Homan [00:38:32]:
I haven’t aged out of it yet.

Pam Barnhill [00:38:36]:
Alright, guys. Thanks so much for joining me. I appreciate it. Thanks,

Laney Homan [00:38:40]:
Pam. Bye.

Pam Barnhill [00:38:54]:
To spend less time planning and more time engaged in learning with your children, join Your Morning Basket Plus, a monthly membership with everything you need to start a morning time practice in your homeschool. To join, head on over to ymbplus.com, and I’ll see you there.