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Morning Basket: What's Inside Yours?
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Forgot to add that we’ll be finishing up Pond & Stream study this fall, too. We started in the spring and then the summer got busy. We’re going to try to do that 3x/week to finish before the snow starts.
Morning Basket
- Catherine Vos Bible Stories
- Aesop’s Fables
The Trumpet of the Swan & The Pilgrim’s Progress to start
- Scripture Memory
- Math Facts
- SCM History/Geography/Bible
- Picture/Composer/Poetry/Hymn Studies/Handicrafts/Lessons in Pastels
- Speaking Spanish with Miss Mason & Francois
- Laying Down the Rails
We just have a three and six year old, but our “morning basket” is more like a leisurely breakfast time around the table. With little ones, it seems to help if they are eating while we talk and hopefully builds a habit of conversation over meals.
We go over being able to spell their full names, address, phone number, what state and country we live in, the temperature and what you would wear today, what birds are at our feeders that morning (we can see our bird feeders from the patio doors by our kitchen table), going over the month and day and putting stickers on the date on a calendar from Missouri’s conservation department that also tell us something happening in nature that day, Bible reading and narration (often leads to questions and discussions), and our scripture memory verses.
We also keep a family “book of firsts” with weather events, birthdays, milestones, etc. that we add to occasionally during this time. If I remember, I play music from the composer we are listening to in the background.
Sounds like a lot, but is usually only takes 20-30 minutes unless there is a lot of good discussion that day. Afterwards, the six year old does her morning chores while I finish my morning caffeine 😉 and clean up.
Our afternoon tea (really just snack time) is when we do our artist study, poetry or hymn (once again playing our composer selection if I remember).
On the topic of schooling over food :-), my kids also love it when I pack lunch boxes for them and let them have a picnic outside or indoors on a blanket while I read aloud. They surprisingly listen really well while eating!
I have two boys aged 9 and *almost* 8 who actively participate in our morning time. The 4 year old joins in sometimes. In my morning time, we have:
- Bible
- Prologue of Ohrid (saints)
- Memory work
- Family literature book (currently The Green Ember)
- And then loop through: Laying Down the Rails, math living picture books, and picture study
I love the idea of adding in a magazine article! I’d also like to include some sort of Orthodox hymn/music study.
This morning’s basket was fun and simple. We introduced our first artist for this year: Edmund Dulac. He illustrated a lot of things, including Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tales. (Can you guess what we’ll be reading in the basket once I get the book?) We also decided to do a general music and orchestra overview for this semester using the book/cd combo The Story of the Orchestra. This morning it had us listening to part of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries, which the kids really enjoyed.
Now to add in more things to our basket each day until we’ve got it all going. 🙂
Ours is a little different because we do a few of the bigger subjects together still, even at the middle/high level.
Morning Basket – Term 1
This year for our daily devotion/religion we’re reading out loud from Micheal Curry’s book “Crazy Christians” alternately with C.S. Lewis’ book “Four Loves” … we all read one day and we just talk about what struck us most and have a kind of organic discussion/see where we go (usually where we need to).
I didn’t list it here but as needed (for mental health or needed knowledge) we do something called Games/Drill/Review, which is really just us doing some type of the above from an assortment of online and tangible things I’ve collected for 10 or 15 minutes.
Monday
- World History
- ROL
- Poet Study
- Science
- Language Arts
Tuesday
- Geography
- American History
- Picture Study
- Plutarch
- Dictation
- Science
Wednesday
- World History
- Dictation
- ROL
- Science
- Hymn Singing
- Logic
Thursday
- American History
- Composer Study
- Science
- Geography
- Dictation
- Shakespeare
Friday
- ROL
- Latin
- World History
- Folksong Singing
- Science
- Recitation
In general … I stick to this order for these lessons. The rest of their lessons are done independently after these are done.
Ours is a shelf, and it’s in the afternoon….accidentally named “everybody come to the couch” time.
We have:
Leading Little Ones to God
Polite Moments
Geography from A to Z
Science in the Beginning (we often just use as a read aloud without experiments)
Come Look With Me
We also just started doing this occasionally
Our current literature read-aloud
Index card memory box
Claire – we have some main subjects that are done together too. The whole family (high school to the toddler) does history together. However it is not part of our morning basket. And the 7 younger kids (5th grade and under) do science together. High schooler is on her own for science, though the other kids often participate in her experiments (watching, asking questions) and she often leads the younger ones through some science experiments for fun. We also do scripture study together, currently integrated into our ancient history studies. These subjects just are not part of our basket.
KeriJ – a shelf works! Our books and things are on a shelf too at the moment and each morning I pull from the shelf the things we need for that day’s morning time and put them on the hermit crab cage in the living room.
It’s fun to see everyone’s morning basket! Our Circle Time (Morning Basket) includes the following…
MONDAY
History
Bible
Church History
Composer StudyTUESDAY
Science
Bible
Geography
PlutarchWEDNESDAY
History
Bible
Church History
Natural HistoryTHURSDAY
Science
Bible
Missionary Study
Picture StudyFRIDAY
History
Health
Nature StudyYou can read more about the planning of and specific resources we’re using this term here….
http://reflectionsfromdrywoodcreek.blogspot.com/2015/08/2015-2016-homeschool-planning.html
Blessings,
MelissaOur morning basket (actually magazine holder and card box) consists of:
prayer and hymn (well, you can’t really put those in a basket)
Scripture memorization
Dictionary of Idioms (1 a day)
Vocabulary Cartoons (1 a day)
an article or two from our church magazine
a few pages from a religious book
1 “manner” from our manners book
We do other subjects together as a family, but this is the ‘morning one’ before things like history or geography.
I guess for our home Morning Basket is essentially our Family Lessons. I’ve listened to others talk about it as a place to keep things that enrich learning but might be missed if they tried to fit them in to their days – think Fine Arts subjects. For me, all my lessons fall in to this category! I’ve never been able to pull my two kids in and out of their independent work. Once I let them go, they are gone. Interrupting them sends them over the roof and I respect that … just their particular comfort level. Therefore it helps for me to grab my Morning Basket and work through that rich feast (core family subjects and fine arts and more) then move to a “hover mode” as they work independently and I check or interact as needed.
I have kids who really wake up ready to be done and free everyday. They’re intensely curious and voracious readers but they see homeschooling as school and they definitely prefer their free time. They would love to unschool. Over the years it has lead me to work with them to choose almost all our curriculum. I think that’s good but I sometimes dream of kids who just bubbled with “what’s next, mama?” instead of “are your lessons done, so I can do mine?” Ahem! 😉
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