Morning Basket

Morning Basket is by no means my idea. It is one I saw other homeschool moms using, and knew would benefit our family. One of my favorite things about Morning Basket is that families that use it adapt it in a way that works for them. The same can be said for our Morning Basket Time! Morning Basket time is something we value and enjoy together each morning, even if our books are no longer held in an actual basket.

I originally began Morning Basket because I wanted a way to include a Bible Time with both girls, and without using a specific curriculum. I also value reading together, and knew that I wanted the girls to build stamina in listening to stories together. I knew that repeated practice listening to progressively longer stories would set them up for the rest of their lives. Building that stamina would help them learn how to learn about various topics. It would help them to stretch their attention span so that they can focus for longer stretches of time. This is vital to being a life-long learner!

Also, because we homeschool on (generally speaking) one income, we also needed to find a way to include all of our subjects in a very budget friendly way. I knew that with Morning Basket, we could implement Science and History without needing to buy specific curriculums (at least while the girls are young), which would cut the cost of curriculum each year dramatically.

Over the course of the last year and a half, the girls and I have come to love our time together reading. Now that we’ve found our groove with it, the girls often pick books about a specific topic or subject to include in our regularly scheduled subjects, either from our own library or from the public library. It’s been a special time together, that each of us has crafted into what we need from the day.

Currently, we use this time to learn a new hymn together, pray, practice a memory verse, do a short topical Bible study, learn a new catechism question and answer, read a short story together, and study history, and science. All in all, this takes us about 30 minutes.

In the future, I’d like to add in learning a foreign language and art appreciation, but for now, we have enough to keep us busy!

While we go through each of these topics, we are usually sitting together at the table. Most of the books we are reading together have pictures for the girls to look at while I read. They will sometimes draw while I’m reading. Other times, they’ll each play independently with a non-noisy toy (think: magnetic tiles, blocks, legos, etc). It’s not a requirement to sit at the table with me, but both chose to.

This is not something we were able to do overnight. We started SMALL–one Bible story, a catechism question and answer, and a short story. As the girls started asking for more, I began adding in more items, without it being overbearing. While T is almost 7 and can listen a lot longer, E does get antsy sometimes–she’s 3, so that’s natural and NORMAL. She doesn’t get in trouble for it, unless she’s choosing to be loud and a distraction (and even then it’s a simple question, “Are you being a distraction right now?” to give her an opportunity to self-regulate before being disciplined). When sitting still gets to be too much for her, she gets up, and switches activities, or climbs on to my lap.

Morning Basket is completely adaptable, and even if you don’t homeschool, you can add this into your family’s routine for enrichment or to have a literacy time together. You could easily implement this into your dinner time, or even bedtime routines. You don’t have to overcomplicate it, but adding one or two specific books or habits into your already established routines can help you to teach your kids about a topic that might not be hit on a typical day or at school.

We (and I’m talking to myself here) spend so much time on our devices, and are sometimes so incredibly disconnected from our own families, that adding in this time together helps us to bond, learn something new, and instill important lessons.

So, does this sound like something that would benefit your family? If you try it, let me know! I can’t wait to here about it!