Morning baskets are one of the very first things that my mom recommended to us when we started schooling at home over 4 months ago. I quickly realized that everywhere you look in the homeschool community, there they are. If you’re anything like I was you are probably wondering what is this whole morning basket thing business and is it a good idea?
Morning basket is just another name for a practice that has been going on in the homeschool world for over 30 years.
Basically it’s a time each day when everyone in the family comes together to learn about specific things. It has other names such as Morning Time, circle time, symposium, or power hour but it doesn’t matter what you call it. The jist is still the same. Everybody is learning together at the same time.
People often ask if they actually need a basket in order to do this. The answer is ‘no’. You definitely don’t have to have a basket. We use a big VS tote bag to toss our MB stuff into when we are schooling on the go. However, it is helpful to have one location to store all of the items that you use during your MB time. A basket, bag, plastic bin, ect would work too.
What’s the point of a morning basket? Why do it?
So the concept of having MB time is to go over certain subjects or topics together as a whole. No matter what age gap you may have, you can utilize this time to school together as a family and to cover specific things before breaking off to one on one curriculum. It simplifies the day but it also is a neat way to start your mornings all together with your children and even spouse. Brian joins us for when he can for prayers, praise and worship, and bible story.
What goes in a MB? Like, what subjects do you include?
You could do anything that you personally want to do and whatever fits group learning with your family. It’s totally customizable to each school house. For us personally, we open with a prayer, sing a praise and worship song, talk about our weekly Bible story, read aloud (sometimes this is Biblical and sometimes it’s just traditional read aloud content), then we start that day’s curriculum. I don’t cram every subject in to one day. It’s simply too much to cover in my opinion. We stagger days so our morning basket time includes me teaching/briefing that day’s subjects. For example, Mondays and Thursdays are Math, Geography, & Science. Wednesdays and Fridays are English Language Arts, History, & Timeline. Tuesdays are class in another town so I leave that entire day open for Walmart pick up and ‘field trips’. We like to utilize our time out of town. Ice cream dates. Park dates. Play dates with our nwa friends. The safari. Ect. Our specific curriculum’s core is geared around memory work. It teaches world history and timeline by song. It teaches skip counting by song. It teaches science and astronomy by song. It’s mind blowingly extensive and incredibly catchy. If you haven’t looked into memory work and that concept of teaching I can not recommend it enough. I have learned thousands of things that was not taught in public school. Things that my teacher friends said that they didn’t learn until college, if at all. I will share the kids singing their memory work here and there on social media but for copyright purposes since it’s a private program that required acceptance and tuition I am not able to share a lot of details on the memory work itself. I’m being modest when I say how extensive it is though. It shocked me. Anyways, back to our MB — we in short use this time to gather as a family and spend time together, in God’s word. We use it to go over our daily curriculum before we break off and I work one on one with each kiddo. Our son and preschooler don’t have as much school time as our 3rd graders so that makes one on one time much easier for me to fit in. I take care of the littler kids first then move on to the older two. Our curriculum changes each day but I don’t change my basket every day. I change our read alouds out. I change our flash cards out. I change random things here and there as needed but our curriculum teachings are all pretty much in one sourced binder that I use to teach from. The kids binders-workbooks are in our school carts. My biggest thing going into this was NOT to have multiple books for the kids to have to manage. I wanted everything in one SIMPLE spot. (And I’m not talking basic reading content. We LOVE our library and it grows daily. I’m talking Day to day curriculum.) For us, this is a binder system. I can include endless curriculums and programs in one binder without having several different books. As a mom of five, basic is key. I will never be that school house with hundreds of workbooks or programs that looks nice in pictures but doesn’t get used. There’s no reason to have an overboard amount of curriculum. Young children won’t be able to cover that much stuff in a school year without the parent overwhelming them. My children (or children in general) don’t need that kind of sensory overload nor do busy moms that are running households and managing everything under the sun. Structure and simplicity is everything. It’s not only eco friendly (less paper because you can laminate and reuse stuff for other children), child friendly (not having multiple work books to handle), but it’s also cost effective. Even if you have kids of different ages, there are still ways to utilize more practical options in regards to not have 5-10 books for each student. I buy a workbook, scan/copy from it, three hole punch it, and pop it into their binders. Done and done. Easy peasy. Everything in one spot for each child. It makes schooling on the go SO MUCH MORE FUNCTIONAL too. I also highly utilize digital download purchased sources. I download them and back them up twice onto thumb drives then print as needed. They last forever and work for kids of a huge age range. I have a very minimalist approach to our lifestyle and all of these tips help me stay in line with that. There are times when multiple sources are needed. I totally get that. A binder system Is still my favorite way to store each child’s work. I can not say this enough, you don’t need to recreate Public school at home! You don’t need a ton of items to homeschool Or to spend thousands of dollars on products. Don’t do it. It goes against the point of schooling at home, in my opinion and can make the whole concept overwhelming for both mom and child(ren).
How long should MB time be?
It is going to vary from family to family.
If you have kids that are close together in age so you’re able to use this as a really efficient way to teach multiple ages together, it will probably be a large part of your school day. It takes us an hour to an hour and a half. the prayers, bible story, and singing part isn’t actual book work type of schooling so this isn’t an hour and a half of focused schooling. However, if you’re dealing with a wide variety of ages your MB time is probably going to be a lot shorter.
How do you deal with toddlers or babies during MB time?
I include them for as much of it as possible. I don’t expect perfection. We all know how demanding and on their own terms toddlers can be. I work with what the day presents. Sometimes that’s beautiful and smooth. Sometimes that’s baby wearing. Sometimes that’s feeding snacks to a younger siblings while I teach. Sometimes that’s letting her color or draw in her work book. Sometimes I’m nursing while I read our Bible story. It changes each day and we just work with it. Flexibility. The perks of homeschooling. Multi tasking. The gifts of a mom of many.
Do you do anything special for poetry or literature during MB time?
Not typically. We have tea time for those subjects. Once a week we have a tea party. I play classical music. We bake fun treats together (My daughters are huge into baking right now. They LOVE the show kids baking championship on TV. We bought them a ton of baking tools. Piping tips and bags. A spin table. Beveling tools. Aprons. The whole shebang and they bake for us atleast 5 times a week so I make sure to include them in tea time prep.) We get our tea cups out. And we read poetry aloud or talk about literature.
Do you include nature studies or animal science in your MB time?
You guys can do whatever your hearts desire. There are no rules. We personally, set aside a separate time for nature and animal studies but those are things that you could include in your MB time.
Do you HAVE to do MB?
No. Definitely not. Again, homeschooling is about what you want to do and what works for your family. There isn’t a right or wrong way. There is more functional ways though so just find out what that looks like for your home. For us, it’s simplicity. It’s flexibility. It’s embracing nature and music. It’s a Christ centered foundation. It’s not holding a standard for public school routines. It’s child led approaches to everything that we do. From baby led weaning, to toddler led potty training, to respecting that sometimes kids just have off days and aren’t going to be productive learners. Last year My 7 year old called ‘stupid’ by her teacher multiple times when she was asking for help with math. The same teacher called me to ask me what was wrong with my daughter and why she wasn’t ‘being a Good learner’ that week. She told me that kids are still be expecting to preform perfectly even when they aren’t feeling well emotionally. Mind you that my child was SEVEN YEARS OLD. It made me sick. My husband and I went to the school and had a meeting with the teacher and both principles. I’ll never forget that experience and how hard it burned a scar into our family. It’s a huge motivation for me as a mother and as a teacher. Y’all, it is possible to cover a vast majority of subjects effectively without compromising the beauty of day to day adjustments and child led fluctuations!
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