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Morning Basket – Let's Discuss!
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Kellywright: the littles in our family love listening to the morning basket. That is why we keep our MB time to 10 minutes or less and just do Bible, scripture, and a short read aloud.
My dd3 does 1 scripture verse per season (so now she has 4 that she knows total because we’ve been doing it for a year). I picked very short verses for her like Psalm 100:2 “Serve the Lord with gladness.”
I try to start the MB halfway through breakfast so the baby and DD3 are busy eating.
HTH!
Lots of great ideas! I put together a basket this year with all our fine arts subjects, but we were terrible about getting to it (we had a baby in Feb). I’m hoping to do better with this next year. When we got to it, we did our memory work plus one other selection…although we usually started our day with the memory work and saved the extra selection for after school was finished. I think I’ll try to start our day with it this year so it doesn’t get pushed aside!
Our basket held:
- Nature Friend magazines
- Midsummer Nights Dream (Young Reader’s Shakespeare)
- 2 Lewis Carol poetry books
- Edvard Grieg CD
- Grandma Moses book (Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Artists)
- Our Scripture Memory Box and Catechism book
I’m a little confused about the Morning Basket idea. Obviously it’s something that’s meant to be personalized for each family & appears to be a way of keeping together the materials for family subjects. Is that all it is? Is that the purpose of it…to keep family subjects together & set aside a time to go through those during one time each day rather than fitting them in at different points throughout the school day? Perhaps I’m analyzing the term “morning basket” too much making it seem like some major concept lol!
elsnow6 – I think one potential purpose of a morning basket is that is can be a way to make sure important things that can get skipped when the pressures of the day build up are assured a place in your day early on. For a fictitious example I may really struggle to make time for picture study, composer study, scripture memory, and shakespeare. If a day gets off track and I need to cut something those are the first things cut every time. The problem is that leads to simply dropping some of those all together until all we are left with are the basics and we’ve lost the broad feast of ideas Charlotte Mason emphasizes.
By having a morning basket that starts our day I can give these things a place. Each day I may do one of those ‘easily skipped’ lessons in our morning basket time. I’m much less likely to say later in the day “forget about it, we’ll skip it” to math or science, so if those are the only things left we’ll make time for them.
That is really only one reason I love the morning basket/morning time idea. I can share some others too if you’re interested. I look forward to hearing others answers to your question!
Thanks Tristan! That’s what I was gathering from what I’ve read & that’s so true for me. In fact, I just posted about my difficulty with all this…obviously there are some things going on that get me off track to the point of dropping parts of the “feast”. Perhaps having a morning basket is part of the answer to the difficulties I expressed in my other post. Now that I think about it, part of the issue is not having things organized for those goodies that make up a CM education & going on the search for things winds with all of us off track.
I agree, the neat thing I think is the underlying principle of having a spot with all the things ready to go for this morning time. It could be a particular shelf instead of a basket, but the commitment of having it there and starting the day with it can be helpful.
So is this mostly something you do when you have multiple children, relatively close in age? I have an almost 7 year old and an almost 2 year old. My daughter fills in her calendar & math journal page after she first gets up, dresses, makes her bed etc. (sometimes I’m still sleeping with the toddler other times I’m working on breakfast. Then we eat and then, we do morning worship together (even my toddler) and then I usually move into Bible with my daughter (I have to distract my toddler with toys in a different room first or he will climb all over me and not let me read. And then we move into Math etc. I like the idea of a morning basket but, it just sounds like it’s primary goal is to do joint studies together & then move into independent work. Am I understanding this right?
BlessedMommy- from what Tristan said in response to me, I’d say that a morning basket could be done for 1 child as well. One of the purposes (& could be the sole purpose in some cases) is to have the materials organized for a lot of the “extras” that make up a CM education with a dedicated time to pull these out & use them. I have an 8yo & 5yo so really only have been homeschooling the 8yo (going to incorporate the 5yo more this year but nothing too formal). As I begin to assemble my morning basket (again, mainly for the 8yo), I think I’d like to have the materials for picture study, composer study, poetry, scripture memory, hymn study & perhaps the read-aloud…not totally sure yet. So that would include a book of Robert Louis Stevenson poems, scripture memory cards, a Bible, the Nook tablet (I have pictures & music saved on it for picture & composer study & access to YouTube for hymn study), etc. I was even thinking I could put dividers in there that could help me to stay on track with doing the subjects that wouldn’t be daily (for ex. “Day 1” divider & put picture study or science or whatever subject stuff behind it then move those materials to “Day 4” when used so that I use them a second day that week if it is a 2x/week subject…does that make sense?). It sounds like you have something that is working pretty well for you…I’m so amazed your daughter is that independent 🙂 Mine could be but typically is pulled off track by her 5yo sister lol.
Tristan (or others who are good at figuring out which subjects use which parts of the brain so to speak)- For a morning basket, I’m just not as certain how to switch up the subjects or how often to do these. So, here’s what I’m thinking for us starting out:
Picture study- having them look at a pic for a few minutes then sharing what they remember/like/etc. about it
Composer study- having them listen to a song then sharing what they felt/noticed/etc. about it
Hymn study- having them listen to & learning to sing hymns (aiming for some of the common ones we sing in church so they can sing along more confidently)
Poetry- reading aloud (me or my 8yo) & memorizing a RLS poem
Scripture memory- using SCM system & perhaps will add or replace with Awana work once that starts back
Bible- reading a short passage aloud (me or my 8yo) & perhaps having a brief narration or them sharing what thinks it’s aboutin some way
Read-aloud/Nature study- read from Burgess Bird Book & have use either notebooking pages or nature study journal to draw or note some of the things learning about the birds as we read (so we’ll be reading through this slowly to catch all the cool info & 5yo would just listen though she could “draw” if she wants)
Would you do each of these things every day? If so, how would you switch up the subjects to address the idea of using different parts of the brain?
Janell’s audio link was very pertinent. Cindy Rollins gave many examples of what morning time encompases in her home. I also found her blog. Here is a series of articles she posted on 31 Days to Morning Time…
http://www.ordo-amoris.com/p/31-day-of-m.html
Blessings,
Melissa
elsnow – I do composer study, picture study, and nature study once a week. If it happens more often outside of school time great(like nature study we just happen across — today we saw a baby cardinal fledge and his parents feeding him outside our window).
So I think of putting each of those on a separate day and breaking up our reading aloud with other things. So we may do a morning like this:
- Sing a hymn. (oral/singing)
- Read aloud a chapter in scriptures. (listening/reading/speaking) with narration or discussion.
- Practice memory work, probably having children stand up so they can move a bit/get wiggles out. (speaking/moving)
- Practice a poem together (read and repeat, or just listen as someone reads one to enjoy).
- Read a chapter of a book (history, literature, science, anything) with narration.
So on a different day would replace the poem with picture study (looking and narrating), then the following day replace it with composer study (listening to music), and maybe on another day we shift it to after reading a chapter in a book and go outside for 20 minutes for nature study and nature journals.
Here, again, you can see my love of routine, where most pieces stay the same order and only a little changes. Other people might mix up the order of these things each morning more (start with poetry one day and with memory work one day etc), To each their own!
@BlessedMommy – I think it can work for just one too, it just is giving first priority to a variety of things a the beginning of your day. With only 1 or 2 children you may not have any trouble getting in the wide feast of ideas during your day though without morning time. That’s ok!
Another benefit to morning time is simply the routine beginning of the day as a family. Lingering over these things first thing sets a tone to the rest of the morning. If you are just going to hurry through morning time to ‘get to academics’ then it’s going to lose one real facet of it’s value. For me, Morning Time is my reminder that we can linger over these things together and not rush through the day. It may not feel the same to you! We’re all different and while there are many good things we can do there is no ‘one right way’ to organize your homeschool. Morning time may or may not be part of the way you picture your day going and that is ok too.
Thanks Tristan! I think I’ll structure mine like that & see how it goes. No reason to try to change it up if it could workfor my family too:-) I’m trying to learn & accept that there are no “perfect” or “best” plans especially if all I do is keep searching for one & not carrying any out :-/
When everyone says that are doing Bible, do they mean the readings from say Module 1, Lesson 1? Or, is this a separate Bible time based on each individual family? Just something I’ve been wondering. I really wish I would meet someone local that does the CM method that I could just see their day in action. At least, I have the DVD set on its way to encourage me now.
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