Homeschool Better Together with Pam Barnhill

As a child Christin Ditchfield devoured the Chronicles of Narnia over and over again. As an adult she found that she kept returning to the truth's found in Lewis' work for guidance. As a result she created the Family Guide to Narnia, a book that highlights the Biblical parallels in the works, to help families see the connections between Narnia and Scripture.Today she is on the podcast to chat with us about Narnia, what we can learn from stories, and easy ways for us to discuss the deeper meanings of literature in our Morning Time.For show notes and episode downloads, visit https://pambarnhill.com/ymb23/.Mentioned in this episode:Spring Curriculum Showcase – Fresh Deals Every Week at PamBarnhill.com!Say goodbye to overwhelm and hello to joyful learning! The Spring Curriculum Showcase at PamBarnhill.com/shop is live, featuring weekly spotlights on our most-loved and brand-new resources for the 2025–2026 school year. Discover open-and-go language arts bundles, brand-new middle school resources, geography notebooks, a new photography course for teens, and more! Each week brings a new special you won't want to miss—shop now and find flexible, family-friendly curriculum that fits your real life.Shop

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is on my Homeschool Field Trip Bucket List. Yours too? I want to share the wonder and awe I felt as I looked at the larger than life paintings for the first time.But how? I am no where near the Met. I know little to nothing about art, except that I do like to look at it. Is this enough? How do I start a picture study with my children? What are we looking for? How can I expect them to respond?Emily Kiser to the rescue! In this episode of Your Morning Basket, Emily answers these questions and more. She gently tells us how we can add picture study to our basket in baby steps; exposure, enjoyment, and analysis.For shownotes and episode downloads, visit https://pambarnhill.com/ymb22/.Mentioned in this episode:Spring Curriculum Showcase – Fresh Deals Every Week at PamBarnhill.com!Say goodbye to overwhelm and hello to joyful learning! The Spring Curriculum Showcase at PamBarnhill.com/shop is live, featuring weekly spotlights on our most-loved and brand-new resources for the 2025–2026 school year. Discover open-and-go language arts bundles, brand-new middle school resources, geography notebooks, a new photography course for teens, and more! Each week brings a new special you won't want to miss—shop now and find flexible, family-friendly curriculum that fits your real life.Shop

Shakespeare. Whatever feelings you have about the Bard, we can all agree that he was the most influential English writer in history. But why should I bother with Shakespearean language for my littles in Morning Time? Won't there be plenty of time for that when they are older? More importantly how would I introduce such a daunting mass of literature? What if I don't know much Shakespeare myself? What if I don't even think I like Shakespeare? Ken Ludwig is a playwright and father who has an infectious love of Shakespeare. He began sharing his love with his children at a very young age. Recently he published How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare, a book detailing this surprisingly simple way to teach the Bard's great works to our children. Come and enjoy as Ken tells us why and how we should teach Shakespeare, as well as how we can handle the harder concepts. Most importantly, Ken encourages us to push past our fear and enjoy Shakespeare in our Morning Times.Mentioned in this episode:Spring Curriculum Showcase – Fresh Deals Every Week at PamBarnhill.com!Say goodbye to overwhelm and hello to joyful learning! The Spring Curriculum Showcase at PamBarnhill.com/shop is live, featuring weekly spotlights on our most-loved and brand-new resources for the 2025–2026 school year. Discover open-and-go language arts bundles, brand-new middle school resources, geography notebooks, a new photography course for teens, and more! Each week brings a new special you won't want to miss—shop now and find flexible, family-friendly curriculum that fits your real life.Shop

Classical music is part of the true, good, and beautiful feast I want to spread before my children. Unfortunately, most days I am at a loss as to how to enjoy it myself. Is there more to classical music than a bunch of strings making, what sounds like to me, just noise? How do I choose which pieces and composers to introduce? What if we don’t like a piece? Why should I even bother when my child enjoys other types of music? In this episode of Your Morning Basket, Pam interviews Bonnie Simon, creator of Maestro Classics. Bonnie has found memories of her parents playing the violin and cello as she went to bed, and Saturday classical music concerts on the radio. She gently explains how you can give your child found memories of classical music through stories. By using stories and listening to classical music together, we can help our children develop a relationship with classical music that will stay with them their whole lives. Come listen and learn how to make musical memories with your children.Mentioned in this episode:Spring Curriculum Showcase – Fresh Deals Every Week at PamBarnhill.com!Say goodbye to overwhelm and hello to joyful learning! The Spring Curriculum Showcase at PamBarnhill.com/shop is live, featuring weekly spotlights on our most-loved and brand-new resources for the 2025–2026 school year. Discover open-and-go language arts bundles, brand-new middle school resources, geography notebooks, a new photography course for teens, and more! Each week brings a new special you won't want to miss—shop now and find flexible, family-friendly curriculum that fits your real life.Shop

We're starting off a new season of Your Morning Basket with an episode all about planning and preparing for Morning Time. Pam and her good friend Dawn Garrett, who is the coordinator for the Your Morning Basket online community, discuss everything from the first ingredient of a solid Morning Time plan to how to pull ourselves out of those Morning Time slumps. Whether you are brand new to Morning Time this year or a seasoned vet looking for a little inspiration, enjoy!Mentioned in this episode:Spring Curriculum Showcase – Fresh Deals Every Week at PamBarnhill.com!Say goodbye to overwhelm and hello to joyful learning! The Spring Curriculum Showcase at PamBarnhill.com/shop is live, featuring weekly spotlights on our most-loved and brand-new resources for the 2025–2026 school year. Discover open-and-go language arts bundles, brand-new middle school resources, geography notebooks, a new photography course for teens, and more! Each week brings a new special you won't want to miss—shop now and find flexible, family-friendly curriculum that fits your real life.Shop

We know there must be more to math than just slogging through page after page of multiplication facts, but what? Last time I checked, wondering at geometrical patterns in God's creation was not in the scope and sequence of my math curriculum, but it's something I long for my kids to have opportunities to do. When can I fit in a math read-aloud or few rounds of one of the logic games collecting dust on the shelf? What about hands-on exploration with big math ideas like probability, estimation, or measurement?  How can I make time for this kind of math in my homeschool? We are joined on this episode of the podcast by Kate Snow of Kate's Homeschool Math Help. Kate explains that, while skill work in math is certainly important, it really is okay sometimes to play with math without a lesson plan and Morning Time is the place to do just that. By weaving math explorations, stories, and games into Morning Time, we can put our kids in touch with big ideas and expose them to the beauty found in mathematics.Mentioned in this episode:Spring Curriculum Showcase – Fresh Deals Every Week at PamBarnhill.com!Say goodbye to overwhelm and hello to joyful learning! The Spring Curriculum Showcase at PamBarnhill.com/shop is live, featuring weekly spotlights on our most-loved and brand-new resources for the 2025–2026 school year. Discover open-and-go language arts bundles, brand-new middle school resources, geography notebooks, a new photography course for teens, and more! Each week brings a new special you won't want to miss—shop now and find flexible, family-friendly curriculum that fits your real life.Shop

Tricia Hodges is a homeschooling mother of five and the co-creator of the art curriculum You Are an Artist.  Tricia is all about a stress-free approach to sparking a love for art in our children, and she joins us on this episode of the podcast to talk about weaving some easy art projects into Morning Time.Tricia's go-to medium for simple, forgiving projects is chalk pastel, and she offers a multitude of free chalk pastel tutorials at her blog Hodgepodge. She gives us step-by-step instructions for set-up, clean-up, and everything in between, including some tips for encouraging the reluctant artist (even if that artist happens to be mom). So grab your art smock and get ready to enjoy a great interview!For show notes and episode downloads, visit https://pambarnhill.com/ymb17/Mentioned in this episode:Spring Curriculum Showcase – Fresh Deals Every Week at PamBarnhill.com!Say goodbye to overwhelm and hello to joyful learning! The Spring Curriculum Showcase at PamBarnhill.com/shop is live, featuring weekly spotlights on our most-loved and brand-new resources for the 2025–2026 school year. Discover open-and-go language arts bundles, brand-new middle school resources, geography notebooks, a new photography course for teens, and more! Each week brings a new special you won't want to miss—shop now and find flexible, family-friendly curriculum that fits your real life.Shop

"To be or not to be." "The course of true love never did run smooth." "All the world's a stage." The language, characters, and stories of William Shakespeare have far-reaching influence for us today in our books, our pop culture, and even our everyday conversations. But despite all this Shakespeare all around us, many of us are still left scratching our heads and wondering how in the world to begin studying the Bard with our students.We are joined today on the podcast by homeschool grad, homeschool mom, and avid Shakespeare lover, Mystie Winkler of Simply Convivial. Mystie describes how, in just a few minutes a couple of times a week, we can share Shakespeare with our children and create in them not only a familiarity with his work, but also a taste for the beauty of his poetry. When we focus on experiencing, enjoying, and embodying Shakespeare by memorizing passages, watching plays, and maybe even acting out a few scenes ourselves, we can foster a lifelong affection for this beloved figure in English literature.To access the podcast downloads for this episode including transcripts, time stamps, discussion questions, and more go to https://pambarnhill.com/ymb16.Mentioned in this episode:Spring Curriculum Showcase – Fresh Deals Every Week at PamBarnhill.com!Say goodbye to overwhelm and hello to joyful learning! The Spring Curriculum Showcase at PamBarnhill.com/shop is live, featuring weekly spotlights on our most-loved and brand-new resources for the 2025–2026 school year. Discover open-and-go language arts bundles, brand-new middle school resources, geography notebooks, a new photography course for teens, and more! Each week brings a new special you won't want to miss—shop now and find flexible, family-friendly curriculum that fits your real life.Shop

Celeste Cruz is a homeschooling mother of eight who started to implement Morning Time in her home with a stack of picture books at the breakfast table back when her oldest two children were just 5 years old.Now with several years of Morning Time under her belt, Celeste is practiced in art of juggling fussy babies, noisy toddlers, and preschoolers with fluctuating attention spans. She joins us on this episode of the podcast to discuss what Morning Time looks like when all the children in the family are preschool age and younger.Celeste shares some great tips for how to create a Morning Time routine packed with thoughtful, high-quality elements while remaining flexible and accommodating of the littlest learners. She encourages us to find natural lulls in our daily routine during which we can nourish both our children and ourselves with beautiful poems, stories, and music.Celeste's wisdom is inspiring but at the same time highly practical, making this an interview not to be missed. Enjoy!Mentioned in this episode:Spring Curriculum Showcase – Fresh Deals Every Week at PamBarnhill.com!Say goodbye to overwhelm and hello to joyful learning! The Spring Curriculum Showcase at PamBarnhill.com/shop is live, featuring weekly spotlights on our most-loved and brand-new resources for the 2025–2026 school year. Discover open-and-go language arts bundles, brand-new middle school resources, geography notebooks, a new photography course for teens, and more! Each week brings a new special you won't want to miss—shop now and find flexible, family-friendly curriculum that fits your real life.Shop

Anne White is a mother of three, a long-time member of the Ambleside Online Advisory Board, and the author of numerous resources on the Greek-born Roman historian Plutarch. She joins us on this episode of the podcast to help us figure out how we might approach reading Plutarch with our kids during Morning Time.Who was Plutarch? What did he write about? Why did Charlotte Mason consider him worthy of inclusion in her course of study? What can modern-day students hope to glean from learning about people and events from so long ago?Anne answers these questions and so many more. She explains that the purpose of reading Plutarch is not to get bogged down in names and dates from ancient history, but rather to share stories with our children and, in doing so, to help them grow in virtue and character. Anne shares how she herself did not understand Plutarch on her first reading, but began to enjoy him after additional reading and study. In sharing her story, Anne reminded me that I can be a fellow learner alongside my children as we approach subjects like these during Morning Time. Listen along as Anne brings Plutarch to life!Mentioned in this episode:Spring Curriculum Showcase – Fresh Deals Every Week at PamBarnhill.com!Say goodbye to overwhelm and hello to joyful learning! The Spring Curriculum Showcase at PamBarnhill.com/shop is live, featuring weekly spotlights on our most-loved and brand-new resources for the 2025–2026 school year. Discover open-and-go language arts bundles, brand-new middle school resources, geography notebooks, a new photography course for teens, and more! Each week brings a new special you won't want to miss—shop now and find flexible, family-friendly curriculum that fits your real life.Shop