Better Together: Strengthen Your Family, Simplify Your Homeschool, and Savor the Subjects that Matter Most

Pam Barnhill has hit a home run with this practical and inspiring book. The beginning chapters give you a wonderful overview of the WHY behind this book. Pam manages to take complex ideas from a wealth of books on educational philosophy and summarize them in a persuasive and easy-to-understand way. Happily, she also has a slightly snarky sense of humor which makes this fun to read. At a time of year when we’re struggling with homeschool slump, this is a refreshing reminder of what the most important, foundational things are. The thing I like best about the book, though, has to be how practical it is. Don’t you hate it when you get all inspired to do something but you can’t figure out how to make it work in real life? Pam has anticipated the questions a mom would ask, and delivered all the ideas, encouragement, and resources you’d need to start. This is thoroughly grounded in real life, with everyday struggles, doubts, toddlers, and mayhem! But it doesn’t stop there, because there is encouragement that you CAN do this well, and plenty of tips to help you. Even as someone who has been doing this for several years, I still had several aha moments and got ideas I’m excited to go home and implement. I enjoyed the Homeschool Snapshots interspersed throughout the book, where she interviews different families. We get to take a peek into how different families are doing this on a day to day basis and hear about their favorite things and biggest struggles. Two Appendices contain a list of resources and a list of 100 things for kids to memorize, from Scripture to poetry, to speeches and science and math facts. These all look to be wonderful selections and could save a busy homeschooling mom a lot of work. I’m excited to have a great resource to recommend to both beginning and seasoned homeschoolers, which shows both why we want to root our homeschools in Truth, Goodness and Beauty, as well as how to get it done.

I had previously done morning time/basket using Gentle Classical Preschool with my four year old when I had a two year old and it went fairly well although he hated listening to classical music and would only memorize one poem (albeit impressively long). Then I had another child and needed to do more than simple math/reading skills with the oldest and I abandoned it because I felt overwhelmed. This book helped me embrace the idea again and really understand the why behind it. I was looking for encouragement while struggling with the grind of the basics with my six year old who hates school. Now I treasure it as part of our day that we all enjoy. I appreciate all the real life examples of what different families do with kids of varrying ages and after reading it I feel free and encouraged to keep it simple and enjoyable in this busy season with three boys: 6, 4 and 5 months old.

Full disclosure: I'm not finished reading this book. First off I will say, with what I have read so far, there is a lot of helpful information. I'm mom to two boys and we're about 2 1/2 years into homeschooling. I am beginning to bring my younger son into our daily practice. Recently, I've been focusing much more on how to structure our days and Mrs. Barnhill does present a lot of useful tips and wonderful questions to ask myself about what I want the big picture of our homeschool story to be. That said, I was turned on to this book via The Homeschool Sisters Podcast, which I love. I knew that Mrs. Barnhill was likely to be the standard religious homeschooler and, as I am a secular homeschooler, I expected there would be some stuff to gloss over. Wow. There is SO MUCH religion mentioned here, just about every page. Maybe it will become less of a focal point later in the book?. It's not necessarily presented in an overbearing way. There is slight acknowledgement that some people might not be homeschooling with that slant. But in other ways it is rather narrow in it's world view. So far that's included a mention of Satan being responsible for our not wanting to behold truth, goodness, and beauty for an hour each day, with utmost seriousness. And the next page the presumption that, "As Christians...it is easy for us to see exactly what truth is." This type of language could be a great selling point for many of you. It's also a huge caveat for others. I will continue reading but it requires for me to disregard and/or translate this type of language into something more universally applicable. That said, I don't want to penalize Mrs. Barnhill for speaking in her own voice with her own language. I could've done more research to vet her prior to this purchase. I did not. That's on me. So my rating reflects the usefulness of the book to ME, aside from the religious perspective. I wanted to add my review for other secular homeschoolers who might be considering this book, since my hunch is that most of the other reviews have been written by fans of Mrs. Barnhill's, fully in-sync with her world view.

Better Together is an encouraging note from an old friend, a toolbox for homeschooling moms, and a window into the many ways homeschool looks different but beautiful for each and every family. I have truly enjoyed Pam's knowledge and tips for bringing our family together each day. Her wit is also a delight throughout the book. It conveys the reality of homeschool and motherhood with a bit of sass thrown in. If you really want to cultivate the habit of a daily time where your family comes together to learn about Truth, goodness, and beauty then this book is the one you need. Full of glorious resources in the back, that alone is worth the price of the book. But you would be remiss to skip the first portion of the book and glean from the wisdom of so many homeschool moms who have strengthened their family through the joys of morning time.

I have really enjoyed reading Pam Barnhill's new book "Better Together." Two years ago I realized that I needed a way to fit in some of the small, but intentional, things I wanted in my homeschool. I stumbled across the idea of morning time or morning baskets on Pinterest. I've followed her blog for a while and now I'm excited to have my hands on her book. I love that she gives us permission to start small and manageable and watch it grow into something beautiful and valuable in your homeschool. And no one's morning time has to look the same even though she provides a lot of resources that we would all find lovely and beneficial. Homeschool friends...this is a great tool for your homeschool toolbox! I'll be keeping this and revisiting it when we need a refreshing!

I just finished reading Better Together. I’ve become acquainted with Pam Barnhill’s website and podcasts over the last year or so and have utilized some of her planning tools and most recently, I purchased an annual subscription to her Morning Time plans. This book is great for tying everything together. There are short chapters featuring different moms sharing how Morning Time looks for them. It’s good for helping you to refocus and refine your goals when you get bogged down in the day to day. The appendices at the end of the book had invaluable resources, many great ideas for MT areas of study. In late April, I’m pushing through to finish this school year. I’m looking forward to planning the next school year and I know I will refer back to Better Together as I map our next year together.

I've practiced morning time in our homeschool for years and it's always been one of the best parts of our day. Better Together is the perfect resource to teach you all about morning time and how to implement it well. I love that the author has included several practical suggestions and resources, but never tells you exactly what YOUR morning time should look like. Instead, she guides you through an easy planning phase that will make it work for your family, and even includes snapshots of various people to show you how they do morning time in their homes. If you happen to be a morning time veteran, there is a lot of refreshment to be found in this book for you, too! I made a few really great tweaks to our schedule that have made a world of difference for us.

The book is well written. I like the concept of "Morning Time" -- it makes a lot of sense. However, as I'm reading the book, I get this over whelming sense that this book is written/geared towards VERY large families. I only have three kids and most of the Mother's who are mentioned in this book book have at least 6 or 7 kids; I feel like a light-weight because I'm not teaching so many children at once. Also, even though I am Christian, I have chosen to, for the most part, homeschool my kids securlarly. This book includes a heavy emphasis on including Scriptures, prayer and the like in your Morning Routine. I don't have any issues with it but it's not something I was aware of when I bought this book. Didn't see this in the description or other reviews...maybe I missed this?? So, if you are of a different religion or not religious at all, this re-occurrent invitation to include these in your Morning Routine might put you off. Also, it doesn't consider Fathers who exclusively homeschool their kids or help a whole lot (like my husband).

Morning time is a great concept and whilst Pam wasn't the originator, she provides great structure for people of follow to get the most of this family time.

Just what I needed!