A few years ago, I first heard about the “morning basket” from a couple of homeschool moms i was following on instagram. At the time, Avery had just been born and Asher was only 2 years old and i was wanting to find a way to create more of a routine in the midst of those crazy newborn mornings! For the last 2.5 years, I have been trying to implement a routine and to build our very own morning basket but it’s been slow going! At the beginning of the pandemic, I made a list of goals for myself to accomplish for the summer and one of those goals was to create + incorporate a morning basket time into our mornings. As of this month – i’m so thankful and happy to say we’ve done it!
What is morning basket?
To put it simply, it is literally a basket full of things you want to do while sitting down together in the morning. (lol, can’t get more literal than that. Every family will have different things in their morning basket, from books to puzzles to worksheets to memory cards – it just depends on what you want to accomplish as a family and incorporate into your mornings.
When I was thinking of getting my morning basket together, I had to stop and think of what my goals, purpose and intention was for having a morning basket. I’ve set up our morning basket in such a way that it contains everything I want to go over that day so that once we go through it in the morning – we could be done with “school” for the day and just spend the rest day playing together!
My personal goals for Morning Basket:
– To have one designated basket full of things to cover for the day
– To make it mobile so we can move it from room to room
– To be intentional with how we spend our morning
– To do more read alouds as a family! (there are so many I want to read to them!)
– To set habits for having a family devotional time in the morning
– To create more intentional opportunities to teach my kids about God!
These goals have helped me to decide what I want to put in the morning basket. This is a still pretty new thing for our family so I am not as consistent as I hope to be (just ask my husband….) – but working on it and honestly, every week is better than the last! I’m excited to see how this will continue to become a part of our family rhythm and all the things I will be able to teach my kids and talk to them about because of it.
The greatest success i’ve found is when I set it up the night before!
When we first started out (picture below), I was a little more ambitious and fancy – but then I realized that we had too many things in the basket and both the kids and I got overwhelmed.. so i decided to simplify it a ton! We started with just two books only (no activities)..and since then, we have been slowly adding to it.
Our morning basket has evolved a ton over the last few months! I’ve learned that for me – I will have most success with this if i just keep it simple! If after reading this, you are wanting to incorporate a morning basket into your day as well – don’t be overwhelmed! Keep it simple and easy! Just think, start with 1-2 things (like 1 book and 1 coloring sheet!) Read the book during breakfast. Think of something easy to prep to keep their restless hands busy while they are listening and sitting with you.
This is what our morning basket time looks like:
- In the morning after they wake, we give them a simple breakfast
- We read the books while they eat and if they finish eating I will give them some sort of simple activity to do (coloring page, puzzle, etc)
- Then we will just chat about what we read about and if there is a video I can show them re: something we read, i will show them on my ipad or phone!
It usually only takes about 15-20 minutes, 30 minutes if they ask for more!
Occasionally, we will add more things to do after we read. The greatest thing about doing morning basket time has been that my kids have gotten used to sitting down at the table for a designated amount of time. Because of that, it’s been very easy to organically incorporate more “school” into our mornings.
Here are the things we currently have in our morning basket for this month:
1) Thoughts that make your heart sing: A really beautiful devotional book that has honestly been a huge blessing to ME.
2) Indescribable: 100 devotions about God and Science: A really cool book that relates random science-facts with things about God! It’s so cool. We have had many cool discussions with the kids from the things we’ve learned in this book. We usually will watch a video about whatever we read about in this book (i.e. my kid’s recent favorite thing has been learning about veined octopuses and how they use coconut shells as shelter!)
3) What your preschooler needs to know: I came across this book a few weeks ago and bought a used version for very cheap. (Our copy is v v old… from a library haha) but it’s been really neat. It has various sections: poems, nursery rhymes, stories, history and science. We read one page from each section everyday and it’s very fast but so informative (I honestly learned a lot from it already haha) There are versions of this book for different grades- we are definitely gonna be checking out the Kindergarten after we are done with this one!
Additional items we have in our basket and will read if we have time or if the kids want to read more stuff together:
– A Child’s Garden of Verses
– A classical treasury of Aesop’s fables
Additional material we have used in the past:
- Everything a child should know about God
- Everything a child should know about prayer
- Big Picture story bible
- Tiny Theologians ABC Cards
Ideas of things to include to keep their hands busy:
One of the things I learned and have also witnessed with my kids, is that they do better during read alouds when they are able to do something with their hands. Most kids that are of toddler/preschool age aren’t able to sit still for long periods of time! When I decided to incorporate more read-alouds at home, I decided to compile a list of things I can offer the kids to do while listening to the book. Of course you can add anything simple you have on hand. But here are some ideas of things you can have on the table to keep them occupied.
- Playdough with playdough toys and tools
- A simple sensory bin (if the clean up after doesn’t make you crazy)
- seek and find sticker pads are a really fun activity for little ones that also help them exercise their fine motor skills.
- An older version of the sticker pads would be Paint by sticker books! There’s also a cool robot one that we have and love. Keeps them occupied for a good amount of time and helps build concentration!
- Popbeads are a fave in our house! My kids play with these toys everyday and it’s just a really great open-ended option! (Note: it is a choking hazard for the younger ones so parental discretion is advised!) Here is a more gender-neutral one I have gifted in the past.
- We also love these Wipe clean activity books because they are reusable, educational, sturdy and really fun! There are several kinds: Wipe clean book for numbers, tracing , letters.
Remember, don’t feel pressured to make it anything crazy. Just keep it simple (seriously just stick with one book!) and remember that the most important thing is that we are spending time with our kiddos and seizing the opportunities each day to capture those teaching moments.
life with the tsengs 