Our "Morning Basket" without the basket. (Or the morning)
If you are even slightly familiar with the world of homeschooling, you have probably heard about something called "the morning basket." It's everywhere. Just head on over to Pinterest, type in those two words, and your screen will be instantly filled with beautifully lit images of rustic baskets or fancy, fabric bins stuffed with gorgeous, hardcover books on every topic. Poetry, History, Bible, Science...they're all there.
It's common now for home school moms to get questions from others about their Morning Baskets.
"What are you using this month?"
"What do you recommenced for this age?"
Or even just, "Do you even do a morning basket?"
I was asked the last question recently. My answer? I have been doing this for years, even before I learned that it was a "thing" or that it had an official name. Only, I don't have a basket, I have a pile. And we often don't even get to it til after lunch (and my 4th cup of coffee...just keeping it real). But it's the same concept.
Basically, a "Morning Basket" is a basket (or pile) of books that you read aloud in a rotation. Rather than doing a chapter of this every Monday, and a chapter of that every Tuesday, you do a chapter of the first book, then place it in the back of the basket. The next time you do your basket, you pull out the book in the front, read from it, then place that one in the back of the basket. You continue the process each day, always putting the books in the back after reading. This keeps a good rotation going without tying you down to any particular schedule. You can do one chapter from one book each day, or a chapter from three books each time, or all of them! You do whatever works for you!
Now that you get the idea, I'll answer the question I am asked so often.
What's in your Morning Basket?
The beauty of the Basket/Pile is that you can put whatever you want in there and switch it out when you finish something. So the basket is constantly changing. Sometimes we have only 3 things in the pile, and other times it's pushing 25-30. Here is what we have this month:
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This book is very special to me. The lessons are very short and hold the attention of my 4 and 2 year olds well. It covers science which my 9 year old finds extremely interesting and even reads about in her spare time, and it talks about God's creation, love, and power, which my 6 year old is completely fascinated with. This is one of the few books that holds the attention and interest of all four of my minis at the same time, and that's hard to do! I highly recommend this one for your homeschool!
This one is quickly making it's way onto my 6-year-old's favorites list! He begs for "just one more chapter" every time I put it down!
I love the number of questions about nature this brings to my kids' minds as we read. I stop A LOT to answer questions and, to me, that's the sign of a great book! It's silly and fun and interesting and a great option for a fictional read aloud. I also like that the chapters are very short, but easily run together. This makes it very easy for me to read as much or as little as I like, and since I read this one during snack time (and the speed at which my children inhale their food changes based on the food offered!) it's nice to be able to stop whenever I like =)
My husband reads this one often to the kids before bed. It's a fun one because, well, watch this video and see for yourself why we love this one! This is the one my 4-year-old daughter asks for most often when it's her to to choose an after snack story.
This one is just fun. Did you know that, for a while, Thomas Jefferson had two bear cubs at the White House? Obviously my kids love this one! It's full of strange facts about the Presidents and bizarre pets that lived at the White House. It tells about these strange pets in rhyming form, which I love, and also covers some of the "Presidential Stats" of each of the pets' owners. It's just a fun, silly history book and I'm sure your kids would love it as much as mine!
My oldest loves the Magic Tree House books. She has read almost the entire series! So, when I discovered what my friend called the "Christian version of Magic Tree House" I jumped on it. We have the first three books in the Imagination Station series and have just started book one. Obviously I can't review them well just yet, but I can say that my kids were all still and quiet as I read, and seemed genuinely interested. I can report further on these at a later time, but for now, I'm just excited about the idea of a children's adventure series that focuses on God's love and Christian morals and principles.
I can't find a good link for this one. Sorry, guys.
I really like this one. It's full of retellings of Aesop's fables, and has questions about each story at the end. This one gets my kids thinking and discussing morals and values. It's easy to read just one short story a day and I find my kids talking about it the rest of the week. I'm all about questions and discussion when we read, so this one stays in the pile. When I finish it, we do it again with the next pile.
Because my kids range in age from 2-9 there are often distractions when we read. I found that the younger ones missed some of the key pieces of these stories the first time we read the book, so we did it again. Now I see that they all pick up something they missed each new time we cover a story. This one, as well as Indescribable, will probably just live in the pile til graduation. =)
So, there you have it! We will do these books til we finish them, and add new things in as we go. I'm always looking for suggestions for great books for my kids, so, if you do a Morning Basket or an afternoon pile, drop a comment and let me know what you have going right now!