Morning Meeting and Monsters!!

I did some updating to our Morning Meeting area for this upcoming school year. I use the space below my two white boards for our Morning Meeting. Our Morning Meeting consists of two sections: the calendar and the morning meeting board.

I am using my same calendar from last year, but I added a strip of the monster border to spruce it up a bit and to tie it all together! Can you guess what our theme might be for this year?


For the Morning Meeting Board, I used two pieces of foam board as the base. I had originally planned to cover it with the same fabric that is on my bulletin boards, but I decided that was too much hassle, so I got out that cute monster border and viola! a cute home-made bulletin board for about $3. I ran a piece of border down the middle too because that seam wasn't so pretty.



After we add the date to the calendar, we move over to the Morning Meeting Board. (The calendar part is pretty obvious, right? Please say yes because I am not done cutting out my months and numbers yet!)

First we have our "Today is...", "Yesterday was...", "Tomorrow will be..." section. This reinforces the days of the week, their order, etc.
I just created these using Microsoft Word. Once I printed them out, I mounted them on cardstock and laminated them. I made a pocket to hold the extra days. I laminated that too to make it more durable. I do have a toddler running around, you know and this is within her reach!

Next, we have our weather section. The kids check the weather each morning after breakfast and they update the weather at the Morning Meeting. They add the big weather card to the "What's the Weather?" to show that day's weather and the small weather card on the one that shows all 5 weekdays. I like this because it helps show them the weather over a duration of time. The pocket holds all the pieces.


You can find these prinatables at: Homeschool Creations and 1+1+1=1.

The next two things are included in the weather and calendar part of the morning meeting. We have a place to write the day and the date two different ways. This is good reinforcement for your older kiddos. We also have a place to chart the inside and outside temperatures. I just mounted these on cardstock and laminated them. You can use a dry-erase or wet-erase marker to change these each day. I personally prefer a Vis-a-Vis wet erase marker (like you'd use on a transparency).

You can find these printables at: Homeschool Creations and 1+1+1=1.

I love the "Make the Date" section of our morning meeting. This is where the kiddos can practice counting coins to form the date. For example, if the date is the 13th, they'll use coins to make 13 cents. All the pieces are in the little pocket!

You can find these printables at 1+1+1=1.

We also have a Color of the Day on our Morning Meeting Board. This is mainly for the benefit of Zoe, but will be good reinforcement for Andrew (K) this year too. We take the time to point out a few things around the room that are that color or think of other things that are that color too. For older kids, have them practice spelling those color words!
You can find this at: 1+1+1=1. This pocket she's created is blank, so it's good for other things too! Save it as a template. (I used it to hold my days of the week.)

This year, we are studying US Geography. By using these clips, I can change the geography section as often as I need to include whatever we are studying. Here I've clipped an Alabama flashcard.

We'll find Alabama on our map, talk about the capital and a few fun facts about the state. We'll also talk about Mountain Regions, Rivers, Trails, etc. this year in geography. We'll touch on it at Morning Meeting and go more in depth later in the day.

Next I have our weekly Bible verse and our Character Quality we are studying. For Bible, we use Developing Godly Character in Children. Each week, I print our verse and character quality on cardstock and slide them into these clips. This makes it easy to remove them and hang a new one each week.

We also have a weather graph to chart the weather over the course of the month.
You can find this printable at Confessions of a Homeschooler.

One more thing we do each day is our Place Value Chart. Each day we add a straw to the "ones" pocket. When we get to 10, we bundle them up with a rubber-band and move them over to the tens place and put a 0 in the ones place. We do this everyday. It reinforces those place-value skills AND it helps me keep up with how many days we've been in school that year! This pocket chart is beside one of my white boards.

I picked this up at my local teacher supply store for about $12 I think. You should be able to find it online too.

Well, that's basically our Morning Meeting portion of our school day. I hope I've given you some ideas and some inspiration to have your own morning meeting with your kiddos!

And now I'll leave you with a few magnificent monsters that you'll find in my school room this year. I am not done with them all, but here's a preview!