This past week we’ve started back on our morning conferences (or as my 13 year old coined it “Momferences”) and subhanAllah, I have to say, it feels like we’ve gained some more control over our day, Alhamdulillah.
I’ve got 4 middle school/high school kids who work independently each day and without some type of conference, I get out of the loop or behind on correcting their work. The struggle has been to find time for the conferences. The older kids are in a public homeschooling program so there’s more accountability for them then when I homeschooled them independently. But, besides them, I have a 4th grade and 1st grader who I do homeschool independently and an active 2 year old. Finding time for daily conferences is difficult as you can imagine.
But, after the progress of this past week, for us, I've been reminded that they are a must for us.
So I made it a PRIORITY to fit them in.
A Momference doesn't have to be formal, it can be as easy as just seeing what's been done or not. But, I like to add in things like checking the kids' appearance, making sure they have said morning/waking up and getting dressed duaas, maybe quiz them on some math facts or something that they are building skills on.
So, of course, if you know me, I needed a checklist to help me remember all those things...
And I like to have a To Do List for the kids where I can write down what is outstanding to work on and should be done by the next conference,
Ideally I would like to meet with the kids in the morning and also late afternoon/early evening. I used to do that when we were overseas and we were homeschooling independently. Right now, I'm working on establishing the morning meeting and in shaa Allah, we'll move on to a second later conference time if I can work it in.
Related
The Home Scholar has a post on having a morning meeting.
