Morning Basket
- Amy Wolf
- May 8, 2020
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 14, 2020
A peek into how we use our morning basket
When I started homeschooling, I had never heard of a morning basket. As I listened to podcasts and read about them, I quickly realized a morning basket was my jam!
Here is a little bit of trivia about me. I adore anything unit or theme based. I delve deep into the theme in all ways possible, sometimes to a fault. So, if you are at all familiar with a morning basket concept, you can see how I could take this to a whole new level of theminess (yep, I just made up that word, but it works, right).
What is a morning basket?
For those of you who are not familiar with morning baskets, here are a couple links to some of the most influential mommas in the homeschool morning basket community. Check out Pam Barnhill's youtube introduction to morning baskets. She also has a great podcast called Your Morning Basket. Or visit Jessica Waldock's website, where she shares pictures of her monthly morning baskets. This was where I first got the inspiration to start a monthly thematic basket; it was right up my alley!
Since my children were born, their birthday parties have been thematic. Perhaps I can share a post on these crazy deep dives. My son had parties around Bob the Builder party, McQueen, and Star Wars, to name a few. My daughter has had parties with a Paris Poodle, Ariel, Peacock, Frozen, and Alice in Wonderland themes. Every single one was like walking into the story or movie experience, from decor to food and everything in between. Suffice to say, themes are my thing.
What we put in our basket
So what is in our basket you ask? Well, its theme-based, of course, because what else would it be? I absolutely love starting with a concept and then watching it grow as I plan it. For example, this month, because of the schools closing, my public-schooled son is home with us. He had been learning about the middle ages at school, and I happened to have a really cool Robin Hood game in my closet we hadn't played. Suddenly I knew we had to do a Robin Hood theme for May! (I previously had Winnie the Pooh and Bees planned, but I thought my son would much prefer Robin Hood.)
My concept started that quick. I was on Google, Amazon, Youtube, and Pinterest, searching up a storm to figure out what I could include in our Robin Hood theme. I will be sharing our Robin Hood morning basket with you over the next couple weeks so you can see what I ended up coming up with. It includes read alouds, lapbooks, games, hands on activities, recipes, movies, and STEM activities. Once in a while I include some kind of loose parts or play dough kit as well, which always excites my daughter. The sky is the limit when I plan a basket. If it fits the theme, would work for their ages, and looks attainable, I usually add it in. Keep in mind, when the libraries are open, this is much easier, because we are largely literature-based. Baskets have been a bit more expensive and smaller since the pandemic, unfortunately.
Take a look here at the items we included in our fairy tale morning basket, pictured above.
How we use our basket
As much as I would love to use our morning basket daily, we office school three days a week, which means our mornings are more hectic as we are rushing out of the house, and goodness knows, I don't sit around the office doing read alouds and hands on projects. Therefore, we enjoy our morning basket two mornings a week when we are home. We usually spend 45-90 minutes, depending on how long we read and how many projects or games are included for the day. Because many of the activities I include are based on reading and writing, I frequently forego structured language arts on these two days, to allow us ample time to enjoy our morning basket theme.
My Planning Strategy
I have already begun planning themes for next year. There are not nearly enough schooling months in the year to cover all the awesome topics I have chosen! So, my next challenge is narrowing them down. I try to have a broad outline for the year, but things do change, as I mentioned this month. Of course, no one could have known my son would be home with me this month, so we went with the flow and Winnie the Pooh has now been added to next year's morning basket line up. I generally wait to accumulate what I need until two or three months prior to the topic. That way I have the flexibility to change my mind.
Changes for next year
This was our first year using a morning basket, so of course, we have made some small changes here and there to find what works for us. I tried adding in memory work and poetry, among a couple other activities, and for some reason we just didn't stick with it. We enjoy our topic based approach, and just felt like the other activities were not being truly loved, by either of us. So we decided not to force it and removed it from our schedule.
What I love about the way are currently using our morning basket, is it becomes an all inclusive experience that allows us to explore literature, science, math, STEM, cooking and everything in between. So, even if we are not doing everything I intend to cover in our core subjects each day, we still touch so many of those concepts via our morning basket, and bonus, it doesn't feel like math, or science because it is so fun and, you guessed it, thematic!
That being said, for this coming year I really want to add about thirty minutes to our morning time and use a rotation schedule to touch on some fun anthologies and books that I have accumulated that we never get around to. I plan to include these books in some sort of schedule, and we will slowly work our way through them, reading a chapter or two a day at the beginning or end of our morning basket time. They are enriching, and educational, and for some reason we just never find time for them. So, for this next school year, that will be my new goal.
I'd love to hear your experiences with morning basket routines if you have one in your home. What has worked for your and what hasn't? What will you be changing, if anything next year?
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