We had a discussion on our curriculum plans, but I thought it would be fun to share morning basket ideas as well.
Here’s what’s going in ours next year:
Outdoor Secrets with the SCM guide
Nature Friend magazine
Chalk Pastels: A Simple Start in Chalk Pastels, plus their spring chalk pastel book (chalkpastel.com)
Hands-on component (one per term): Compass Drawing, Paper Sloyd, embroidery sampler
LDTR for Children
Logic puzzles
Memoria Press’s 3rd grade read aloud booklist, which is a wonderful mix of chapter & picture books
My plan is to have this scheduled at lunch, so I’ll need a different name (other than morning basket). 😉 We’ll be beginning our day with memory work, so that won’t be part of it. Devotions will be part of their independent schoolwork this year, plus we have an evening family devotion.
I’m so early in the planning, but the Your Morning Basket podcast by Pam Barnhill has been such an inspiration.
A few things I have planned:
-we’ll continue with the Complete Book of Marvels. We completed the Occident this year, and we’ll do the Orient next year.
-definitely some math and logic puzzles. This spring I started including some Cryptarithms, which my older two kids have enjoyed.
-I will include more art next year, and am planning to do some Chalk Pastels.
-We’ll continue with Notgrass’ America the Beautiful. We will finish up Volume 2.
I still haven’t decided on our Bible study, nature study or our literature selections for next year. It will be fun to watch other people’s selections.
We just call ours ‘Together Time’, so it can happen anytime of the day.
We keep it going all summer long, so I just plan continually, but I need to decide what we will read for July and August because we will have 2 friends hanging out with us while their mom works. My kids will listen to books for an hour in the morning if we have time, but the 6 year old that will be with us has about a 32 second attention span, so I need to find some shorter books to read.
No morning basket for us. We’ll begin each day with our devotional time (sing a hymn, pray, read and discuss scriptures, scripture memory work). But nothing else in it for next year. We need our mornings to be focused and right into the thick of things (history for all of us follows devotional, then science with the younger 8 while the high schooler works on her veterinary science course next year). We read aloud over at least 1 meal, and art will go up on the wall to chat about over breakfast. Composer will be heard in the mornings as we wake up and get moving.
I’m in the beginning stages of planning our Together Time. I think I’ll be splitting it up into two sessions, but I’m not sure yet…
I’m hoping to include our Bible memory and memorizing at least some of the Declaration of Independence.
Then, my plan is to loop flashcards (addition/subtraction, multi/div, Roots, and treble/bass clef note names).
And we’ll also loop Composer, Artist, Poet, and maybe something else…..unless if I decide to just concentrate on one of those for 12 weeks at a time….I haven’t decided yet.
I’m very new at this but what I’ve got so far is Scripture Memory work, Bible, and prayer to being our day. As well as Literature, 106 Days of Creation and History before the kids move into independent studies.
Enrichment will vary slightly each day through Composer Study, Artist, Poetry, and Hymns. This may be AM or During Lunch.
I am trying to decide on this also. We have a devotion time and then tackle the basics before lunch. Read-alouds and the fun stuff 🙂 have been after lunch mostly. However, as I get farther along in this pregnancy I know I will need a nap after lunch. I’m afraid that the “feast” subjects will be neglected if I don’t work them into the mornings. The scheduling is just boggling my brain right now. On paper, we will have devotions, some individual work, some family work (morning basket?), maybe more individual before lunch. With little people, it doesn’t always flow so neatly.
Looping the subjects is confusing for me too. The last few months I set several baskets across the top of the bookshelf: one for nature study materials, one with poetry books, one with art supplies, etc. The idea was to move from left to right and then loop back around, but I found we kept getting hung up at the same favorites (or ones that mom felt must be completed) and not moving on to all of the baskets.
So I guess it all boils down to habits! 🙂 My habits… I need more habit training for myself!
Our schedule for atleast this year was ditto of Tristan’s day, the only difference is poetry with early morning dev,. prayer, bmv. My grandfather’s book 100 poems every child should know. get your hands on it, if you can. never really thought much of poetry until 2 years ago when we started CM methods. Now we recite to strangers in restaurants, for memorial day celebrations and over the phone to shut-ins, grandparents and neighbors using our speaker phone. Martha
I’m always so excited about developing a morning time/circle time/family studies. Since my daughter was two, we have enjoyed our breakfast with catechism and scripture memory. We add a little all the time.
Today I did some print outs to put in a paper folder. (As recommended by someone here when I asked about morning time binders a few months back)
I really want to move this time AWAY from breakfast. Although catechism may just stay there because I’m a creature of habit…but here is what I have so far.
Catechism, SCM Ancient Egypt Bible/History, Hymn Study, and IEW Poetry Memorization (taking advantage of the free two levels.)
We’ll also do science and read alouds as a family, but with the 8 and under crowd, I believe adding those subjects to what I have already would be too much.
I listened to the first episode of Pam Barnhill’s podcast yesterday when I had locked us out of the house. It had been on my to-do list… the podcast, that is. 🙂 Sonya is one of her guest speakers! She talks about narration.
Anyway, Cindy Rollins said in the first podcast that her morning basket time (family subjects, basically) sometimes lasted two or two & a half hours. Do any of you take that long for that block of subjects? We may have occasionally, but I’m not sure.
The time it takes really depends on how many subjects you are including in the morning basket. If you are including things like history, science, literature, and art, it could easily be the bulk of your schoolday, which for us would be a couple hours. If you are just covering Bible and memory work, it may only take a few minutes each day. I’m hoping to keep ours at 30 minutes or less this year.