Planning our homeschool morning basket reading for each term is one of my favourite parts of my planning rituals. It’s that special time in our homeschooling morning that we gather and share in books, readings and lessons that everyone can enjoy. It creates a sense of togetherness and unity, a sharing in the same rich ideas before breaking away to work on individual grade relevant lessons.
Homeschool Morning Basket
Morning baskets seem to be as unique as the families that utilize them. You could just grab a book from the basket and read, or you could plan to read certain books on certain days as we did throughout the term. No matter how you use your morning basket and how unique each one is there is a common thread to all morning baskets. It is in this time that we can add those subjects or read alouds that don’t seem to fit into our days’ plans. As a Charlotte Mason homeschool, this is the time I would include our Shakespeare, poetry, Christian biographies, read aloud books, nature study reading, seasonal reading and so on. The Curriculum Choice has some lovely posts on homeschool morning baskets, here are some of my favourites:
- Your Morning Basket Review
- Advent Morning Time
- Favourite Homeschool Books – this review will give you some great ideas for your morning basket
- Homeschool Summer Camp
- The Read Aloud Homeschool
Homeschool morning basket from the archives of my own blog:
Under An English Sky Blog
- A Morning Basket of Living Books – in this post I have posted our morning basket plans for a term where you can see how I have structured our plans as well as how I choose what goes into our morning basket.
- Christmas Adventure (Scripture Adventures) – seasonal reading and activities fit into the morning basket time perfectly.
- Seaside Nature Study and Living Books – Our morning basket included living books that I wanted to include in our nature study time but that I wanted to read in the morning before our nature study lessons, those were reserved for outside exploring.
Heather at Blog, She Wrote
Don’t forget that Morning Time isn’t just for mornings! Here are some ideas on how we incorporate Morning Time with teens.
How to Include Teens in Your Morning Time– resources and ideas for including your teens in morning time
Fostering Collaboration with Morning Meeting Time– why morning time meeting is a great place to begin your homeschool day with multiple ages
Our Favorite Learning Games for Morning Time– games we play during our morning time
Morning Time with Teens Podcast– a Blog, She Spoke podcast audio version of including your teens in morning time
Celebrating Advent in Your Morning Time with Teens– materials and resources for doing an Advent morning time with teens
Annie Kate from Tea Time with Annie Kate
Although we have used many aspects of Charlotte Mason’s philosophy over the years, we have never formally adopted the excellent modern implementation of a morning basket. That being said, we did a few things that seem to be similar.
The most fundamental one is that we read the Bible together every single meal. We also prayed, learned Bible texts, and memorized Psalms and hymns. We read through the Bible, from cover to cover, over and over. If you prefer Bible narratives, you may benefit from this list of “Bible Narratives for Ages 10 -15.”
The other one is that for at least two decades we had a tradition of reading aloud, usually after lunch. Here is a list of “Top Twenty Books for Families to Read Aloud.”
Even though we never had a basket and did not do all these things in the morning, we developed habits that greatly benefited our family. If you can make a morning basket work for you, I recommend it; if you cannot, perhaps you can do something similar like we did.
Alison @ Learning Mama
Morning Time is something we’ve included in our homeschool days from very the beginning — even if we didn’t always know it was called Morning Time! Ever since my oldest was a toddler and my second was a tiny baby, we would gather pretty much every morning for read-alouds and singing.
While our family has grown and each child has matured, our Morning Times have as well. What was once a time primarily for picture books and nursery rhymes is now Missionary biographies, hymns, and art and music appreciation.
Read more about our Morning Time practices and favourite resources:
Tricia from Hodgepodge.me and ChalkPastel.com
Like Annie Kate, our homeschool morning basket is a variation based on the needs of our homeschool. When all of our children were 10 and under, we would gather and learn all together early in the day. Then, as the children got older, we naturally moved that time to right after lunch. Now that I have two homeschool grads, we seem to be adjusting how we ‘do’ homeschool together according to the needs and styles of our learners. Basically, we are building habits. Here are some long-standing habits:
- 10 Days of Lasagna Learning
- Morning Room Time
- One More Thing After Lunch
- My Help! I’m Homeschooling! book
This homeschool year we are planning to kick off with morning time – with all of our ages – and the Back to School Backpack. This is a wonderful resource that not only includes morning time plans but composer study, nature study and art to go with it! It will ONLY be available July 16th-26th. So grab it while you can!
AND –included as a bonus in the Back to School Backpack 3.0! Try out morning time learning with this recorded webinar.
Featuring Your Morning Basket, SQUILT, NaturExplorers and ChalkPastel.com!
Will you be using a homeschool morning basket this year? What does learning look like in your homeschool?
Did you know that our Curriculum Choice review team features a different homeschool topic each month? You can see what they have shared on various homeschool topics under Review Team Features.
I didn’t do a basket, but to get my teenagers out of bed and down to school on time, I instituted reading aloud for all of my children at 9 am. We found books the teens and my upper elementary child could all enjoy, such as “Hitty: Her First Hundred Years,” and “Mama’s Bank Account” (I had all girls). If you didn’t show up on time, you wouldn’t find out what happened next. I would hide the book during the rest of the day so no one would peek. I couldn’t believe how well it actually worked, and besides getting children downstairs on time, it helped us bond as mother and daughters.