4Real Forums: Morning Prayer Routine

Oh, Dearest Mother, Sweetest Virgin of Altagracia, our Patroness. You are our Advocate and to you we recommend our needs. You are our Teacher and like disciples we come to learn from the example of your holy life. You are our Mother, and like children, we come to offer you all of the love of our hearts. Receive, dearest Mother, our offerings and listen attentively to our supplications. Amen.

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Willa
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Posted: Feb 18 2006 at 4:23pm \| IP Logged

Do you have a morning prayer routine with your kids before you start your homeschool day? I know Chari says the Rosary. Anyone else?

I'd love details including how you get the kids together, IF you do, whether you do something like light a candle or some other habit -- if you introduce new prayers, that kind of thing.

Also, do you pray before starting a lesson or educational projects with your kids?

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Willa
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Leonie
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Posted: Feb 18 2006 at 5:59pm \| IP Logged

We say morning prayers during our morning "meeting" where we talk about the day and what we are doing - or, if we are out in the car early ( at least a couple of days a week) we talk about our day and say prayers there, in the car.Along with prayers for a safe journey!

If we are home in the morning, we will read about the Saint for the day. Or we talk about the Saint at dinner, esp if we are having anything special to eat in rememberance of the saint.

Our prayers are two morning offerings, a prayer to our guardian angel, the St Michael prayer and maybe, in Lent, Anima Christi.

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KC in TX
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Posted: Feb 18 2006 at 7:30pm \| IP Logged

Okay, going to show my ignorance here

what exactly do you do for your morning offering?

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Jenny
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Posted: Feb 18 2006 at 9:39pm \| IP Logged

This is our Morning Offering

O My God, in union with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer Thee the Precious Blood of Jesus from all the altars throughout the world, joining with it the offering of my every thought, word & action of this day. O My Jesus, I desire today to gain every indulgence & merit I can & I offer them together with myself to Mary Immaculate, that She may best apply them in the interest of Thy Most Sacred Heart. Amen.

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Rebecca
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Posted: Feb 18 2006 at 11:09pm \| IP Logged

Right now, my morning prayers consist of the Morning Offering while I am brushing my teeth. I do not do anymore than this.

I would like to have a morning prayer time alone and with my children but I do not know where to begin.

For those of you who have a morning prayer time, do you normally have it alone or with your children/husband? How much time do you devote to morning prayer? What time does your family normally wake?

Lisa R
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Posted: Feb 19 2006 at 9:10am \| IP Logged

We have recently added a home alter to a corner of our living room after reading about it here. Each morning we light the candles and read the morning prayer and the daily readings from the Magnificat magazine. Then a devotional from Living Faith for Kids.

It's a great start to our day!

Hope this helps!

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Helen
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Posted: Feb 19 2006 at 1:19pm \| IP Logged

Rebecca wrote:

I would like to have a morning prayer time alone and with my children but I do not know where to begin.

For those of you who have a morning prayer time, do you normally have it alone or with your children/husband? How much time do you devote to morning prayer? What time does your family normally wake?

Perhaps this would be helpful?
Castle of the Immaculate Family Prayer

Rebecca
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Posted: Feb 19 2006 at 3:46pm \| IP Logged

Thank you Helen for the wonderful link...I look forward to delving into it later this evening when all my little ones are asleep!

momwise
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Posted: Feb 19 2006 at 5:01pm \| IP Logged

Helen,
Your blog was very helpful!

We also gather at the kitchen table for morning prayers. The prayers vary according to the liturgical season but in general we recite our Morning Offering and Guardian Angel prayers. We say a Hail Mary for the family members out of the house and ask Mary to guide all our cousins (all in public school) to Jesus.

Sometimes we read about the saint of the day together. If we go to morning Mass we pray in the car.

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Natalia
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Posted: Feb 20 2006 at 8:46am \| IP Logged

Willa,
We gather in the kitchen for prayer. We try to have morning prayer by 8:30.
Some time last year I felt the Lord challenging me to put into action the Scripture Seek ye first the kingdom of God... One of the areas I felt I could put this into practice was being more faithful to my prayer life and our family prayer time. So many times prayer was the first thing we skipped if we were running late. I made the decision that no matter how late we were we will always have prayer time.
I like to vary our prayer time. We always say a morning offering (we use the one found on the Catholic Treasure books - it is short but covers allt he essentials). What follows changes. Sometimes we say set of mysteries from the rosary over a week. Other times I share somehing I felt the Lord telling me during my prayer time, sometimes we read a passage of Scripture.
I like to impress on my children that as important as petitions are to us that they are not the only way to pray. So we focus on different types of prayer at times: praise, asking forgiveness, giving thanks etc. Sometimes, if I have bought the Magnificat for that month we do the morning prayer of the Liturgy of the Hour. And then of course we do prayers apropriate to the Liturgical season we are in.
As you see our prayer time is varied. The constants are the morning offering and the read alouds I tagged to our prayer time - a life of a Saint, our Christian Studies of the Old Testament (Memoria Press), Catholic stories etc, and most times we end with an Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory be.
I am always on the look out for new things to enrich our prayer time. Some things I would like to do for our prayer time but haven't yet are: the Growing in the Virtues of Jesus from CHC. It is designed for 7th graders but I think I will have more chance to get it done if we do it as a family. Another thing I would like to use is this Life in the Spirit for Kids.
This is probably more than you wanted to know Willa

Natalia

Willa
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Posted: Feb 20 2006 at 5:19pm \| IP Logged

Natalia wrote:

I am always on the look out for new things to enrich our prayer time. Some things I would like to do for our prayer time but haven't yet are: the Growing in the Virtues of Jesus from CHC. It is designed for 7th graders but I think I will have more chance to get it done if we do it as a family.
This is probably more than you wanted to know Willa

No, it's perfect, Natalia. It sounds like you basically have a family devotional. I like that!

Coincidentally, I was just looking at the middle school version of Growing in the Virtues -- the CHC Virtue Tree, and trying to figure out a way to use it. Would you read aloud to the kids and discuss, or what?

Thanks everyone for the ideas. Can I repeat my question about how you physically get everyone together in the morning for prayer? Perhaps this simply isn't an issue for anyone else, perhaps you all eat breakfast together or have some other "peg" -- but in my home, we all straggle out of our rooms at different times of the day -- especially the teens

So maybe I should have a prayer time with the youngers and let the teens alone for their personal devotions.

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Willa
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Willa
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Posted: Feb 20 2006 at 5:22pm \| IP Logged

Natalia wrote:

Erica Sanchez
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Posted: Feb 20 2006 at 10:25pm \| IP Logged

Willa,

About physically getting everyone together....Our morning prayer time is after breakfast/chores/piano practice when we gather on the couch to begin the school day, usually about 9:00 a.m. Our prayer time, which is usually just a decade of the Rosary and some spiritual reading of some kind, comes before our read alouds and other school reading (history or science typically). This has become so routine, that the kids just expect it. I haven't thought as far down the road as having teens to fit into this routine...yikes! But, hopefully, we'll still gather for at least prayer and then they can go on their way.

Lately, we've been pretty good about having a prayer time after dinner before our nighttime reading. I let each child have "a night". They can set up whatever candles they want on the coffee table and basically choose what we'll "do" for our prayer time. Even the soon-to-be three year old said, "it's my turn to get the candles tonight!" Very, very simple, but it is something!!

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Leonie
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Posted: Feb 21 2006 at 2:11am \| IP Logged

Willa,

I just call everyone into the kitchen when I am ready to talk about the day. Or I give everyone warning that I think, say, 9.30 will be a good time to talk - and we pray before we talk about the day.

Of course, in the car, everyone is there physically!

Dh leaves for work before 7, so he has his own prayer time.

When we had lots of littlies, we would pray after breakfast, chores, exercise and before reading aloud/feed baby time or before our morning walk.

Our morning offerings are -

1. My Lord and my God, I humbly beseech thee that in consideration of the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ, thou will grant unto me all the indulgences attached to my prayers and works for this day. I desire to enter into the disposition necessary to gain these indulgences, that I may satisfy Divine justice and assist the souls in Purgatory. Amen.

2. After the guardian angel prayer and St Michael prayer we pray - Oh Jesus through the most pure heart of Mary, I offer you the prayers, works, joys and suffering of this day, for all the intentions of thy divine heart.

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momwise
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Posted: Feb 21 2006 at 8:20am \| IP Logged

Leonie wrote:

Or I give everyone warning that I think, say, 9.30 will be a good time to talk - and we pray before we talk about the day.

Of course, in the car, everyone is there physically!

Dh leaves for work before 7, so he has his own prayer time.

This is just about what we do Willa. If we are going to 8a.m. Mass I warn the olders to set their alarms the night before. Otherwise, they know they need to eat breakfast and check their email before 9 or so, then we'll be sitting down to pray. I call everyone about 10 min. before we sit down. In addition, the olders rotate morning kitchen chores, so they are usually around on their dish day

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Karen E.
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Posted: Feb 22 2006 at 3:02pm \| IP Logged

This is what we currently do:

I get up early with my dh, and do my morning offering in the shower, along with some petitions. Dh and I do Morning Prayer together, from the Liturgy of the Hours. After he leaves for work, if no one is up/needs my attention, then I and steal some time to do the Office of Readings and have some spontaneous prayer time.

When the kids are all up and we gather for breakfast we do their morning prayers -- after the meal blessing, we say their morning offering, which is very simple:

Dear Lord, I give you this day.
All that I think, all that I say, all that I do
I give to you.

I've been thinking that I should up the ante for the older ones and teach them the same morning offering I do.

Then, we have some petitions that they pray daily, and they each add their own special intention for the day.

Bedtime prayers are the time around here for introducing new prayers. We just start praying something new as a family, and usually the kids pick it up pretty quickly that way.

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Becky Parker
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Posted: Feb 23 2006 at 6:22am \| IP Logged

Okay, confession time. I do get up early and take time to pray befor my kids get up, but my struggle has always been getting the kids together to have a morning prayer before we start our school day. So, not too long ago I bought a little bell. I rang it and if they came running they got a nickle. We did this for about 2 weeks. (It amazed me that even my 12 year old would come for .05! - I think it was a competition thing for him though - who got the first nickle or something

) Anyway, after about 2 weeks I said that now I was going to give them a dime if they came, but it wouldn't be every time - they wouldn't know when there was a reward, they just had to come anyway. I haven't given them any nickles or dimes for a while. Coming for morning prayer when the bell rings has become a habit which was my intention anyway.
Just so you know, it's not that my kids are bad or anything, they just would get involved in something in the morning and I had a hard time pulling them away from whatever they were doing (or I guess I should say sometimes I would get involved with something and the time would slip away from me). It's almost like I needed the bell more than they did! (As a matter of fact, there have been a few mornings when one of my kids would say "Mom, aren't you going to ring the bell?"

)It is worth the effort for me. Saying our morning prayers gives us a great start - and a definite start to our day.

(For morning prayers we just offer our intentions then say the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be followed by a litany of our special saints.)
Becky

Karen E.
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Posted: Feb 23 2006 at 8:10am \| IP Logged

Becky Parker wrote:

It's almost like I needed the bell more than they did!

Isn't that the truth? I have noticed that as my day goes, so goes the family. If I am not on top of things, or disciplined, or cheerful, or fill-in-your-own-blank, then everyone seems to follow my lead. It's daunting to know how much influence we mothers wield over the family, but it's true.

The father may be head of the home, but the mother is the heart (we used to have a priest here who said the mother is the neck that turns the head ....)

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KathrynTherese
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Posted: Feb 23 2006 at 10:07am \| IP Logged

Karen E. wrote:

The father may be head of the home, but the mother is the heart (we used to have a priest here who said the mother is the neck that turns the head ....)

Oh, I love this. It is so true!
And I am guilty of getting side-tracked in the mornings myself, especially when I have a deadline and the kids are being unusually quiet! Partly because they wake at different times (the older ones sleeping longer than the littles), the little ones are often productively active before the teens roll over. It is hard to pull them away from that.

My own solution is to tie prayer-time to meal time. We gather for breakfast, and we say all our morning prayers (Offering, Angel Prayer, Mary prayers, Angelus) before Grace. Then we eat. We may get scrambled apart for the morning, but we have to gather again for lunch, so again we pray (examine our conscious, Act of Contrition, Angelus, Grace) before we eat. The afternoon gets all scrambled again, but we gather for dinner, so we again say the Angelus before we sit.

For Lent, I would like to gather briefly at 3:00 to say at least part of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. Right now, if we are all near enough at 3, we sing "Adoramus Te, Christe" (in two part chant - that one really makes all the homeschool moms think I am superwoman

), but I'd like to make a more emphatic point of this during Lent.

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Helen
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Posted: Feb 24 2006 at 7:44am \| IP Logged

Our Lady of La Salette's advice on morning prayer:

"Do you say your prayers properly, my children?

Oh! my children, you must say them, morning and evening. When you can do no more, say a Pater and an Ave Maria; and when you have the time to do better, you will say more."

September 19, 1846
Our Lady of La Salette

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