Morning Basket Time

Back a couple of years ago, I posted a picture on Instagram of a basket with Christmas books inside. Several people messaged me to ask how our “Christmas basket” functioned. This question left me perplexed. In short, if we wanted to read a Christmas book, we’d get one; then we’d read it. That was the sum of things. Turns out, people were actually inquiring how we structured our “morning basket” time — a concept many homeschoolers use to begin the day. You can read more here if you are unfamiliar with the idea. After reading about it, I adopted the practice too.

How it works for our family

We essentially start the day with our morning basket time. Basically the kids wake up and get breakfasts on their own; then they have some free time to play depending on how early they woke up. I get the baby and myself ready.

Sometimes I make a pot of tea for everyone; the whistle calls them when it’s time to begin. We convene around 8ish at the dining room table. I light a candle and we say a morning offering prayer together. Sometimes it’s a silent, “Please give me more patience today Lord.”

We read aloud — I found this is a great start to our morning basket time as the kids are enthusiastic about fun books. Next we practice snap words, read Life of Fred and do some math or geography games together. After about 30 mins or so, we pull out our bullet journals. The kids are learning how to structure their own journals both in respect to scheduling time and artistically organizing the layouts. We make a plan for the day (or week), and after our Montessori morning work period (in the classroom from 9-12 each morning), we meet again for lunch and to make a brief analysis / write a reflection of what we accomplished during our 3 hour work period. This has really been working for us the past few weeks. I plan to keep it going.

Here’s what’s in our morning basket currently:

Calendar Time with Grimm’s annual calendar. I light a candle; we say a morning offering prayer together asking God to bless and guide our day. Then we add a bead to our year long bead chain.

We read a couple books aloud. We cycle about 3-4 books every 2 weeks, so most books are read at least twice.

We’re finishing up *Life of Fred: Apples* together. It’s silly and the kids find it somewhat amusing. We answer the end of chapter questions aloud.

We do Snap words which are sight words with motions. This can get quite rambunctious but is fun.

We read poetry together — usually 2-3 short poems from various sources. This reader from All About Reading has been perfect. Because I was a creative writing major long, long ago, I can’t *not* analyze the poems with the kids. We talk about rhyme patterns, figures of speech, what tone or perspective the writer uses. Etc. My kids love finding onomatopoeia. *sigh* I can’t wait to analyze Shakespeare with high-schoolers.

An example of a math game we may play. We have similar ones in different subjects. We also play phonics board games together.

For work plans / journaling I usually write on our chalk board (here we had some reading practice too).

We update journals or decorate our calendars.
Then we move into the classroom (back porch) for either a new presentation or to practice work already familiar.