Morning Baskets, What's in Yours?

This introduction to morning baskets is from August 2017:

     I've been on a quest for better educational ideas, a better family culture, and of course better enjoyment of my kids' childhoods. The BEST thing we've started from all of this is morning baskets. To begin, here's a quote about a Charlotte Mason Education: "I wanted them to feast their hearts, souls and minds on fine literature, awe-inspiring art, majestic music, and great thoughts. I wanted them to learn how to think— not just learn to pass a test. I wanted them to be prepared intellectually, spiritually, morally and academically to pursue wholeheartedly whatever passion was on their hearts for the future." (Taylor-Hough, Deborah. A Twaddle-Free Education.) This idea spoke to me, and I definitely want the same things for my children (ages 1.5, 3.5, & 6). Now the question is how do you do it? I read a few different blogs that mentioned morning baskets, and it was my answer. What are they exactly? Well, it's a collection of beautiful things for your family to study together. Here are some examples:  (http://wildflowersandmarbles.com/2014/05/15/morning-basket-ageless-inspiring-and-still-standing/, https://www.artfulhomemaking.com/morning-time-worth-planning-homeschool-days/) These inspired me to put one together for us. I decided on things that are most important for my children to know (in learning together, math doesn't always work if you have different ages). What are my main goals for my children? What are yours? When that's decided, you gather great literature, music, and character building books that meet those goals; put them in a basket so they're in one place, and sit down together as a family to go through the basket (at our house it's not every day, but we're working on it). It's a beautiful way to start your day, and so far it's been pretty fun to see what my kiddos have learned, or what they truly enjoy enough to choose each day.

      Here's what's in our basket (trying to show the contents):

• Devotional: A lot of families put a relationship with God as their number 1 goal (If you're secular, skip this part), for instance I want my children to know that they are children of their Heavenly Father, and to know that He loves them, so I gathered things to help with that relationship first. Then I added other things we can do together to enlighten our minds. We read scriptures in the morning as the kids eat breakfast so that's not included in the basket, but on an ideal day this is what it looks like: after we get morning chores done, we head to the couch for "table time." Mister 6 gets the basket and we go over a few things for a devotional. We do this every day, but the other things are chosen by the kids. 

1.First: after a prayer, we go over some Titles of Jesus. A few years ago we started a tradition of going over some of Jesus' names for Easter, but I couldn't find the eggs to hang on our Spring Tree this year. I finally found them last month, so it's included. One of the boys chooses an egg, and we talk about the name on the card and read the scripture to go along with it. 

 

2. I also put in the Friend magazine, a religious magazine with children's stories and activities. This we don't read every day, but probably once a week. I'd like them to know that talking about God and Jesus is an everyday thing, not just in formal times when we read the scriptures that are a bit harder to understand. 

3. Then we sing a primary song or hymn, with Mister 3's favorite being, "Listen to the Still Small Voice"... and have a 

4. Memorizing/reciting moment from poems in our book of poetry, or a scripture. I honestly didn't even think of my boys memorizing things until I read more of Charlotte Mason, and it's been pretty amazing what they've already learned from this simple activity! We go over some that we've already learned, and then practice a few lines of something new. We started with, "Said the Robin to the Sparrow," a cute little poem I taught my younger siblings one year in "summer school" which wasn't really school, but they did learn a poem. This brought back all sorts of nostalgia... We've also done Joshua 24:15, King Winter, Summer Sun and 1 Nephi 17:3. 

5. We also look up one ancestor or family member in a tiny book I made with a photo/page for each child, parents, and grandparents back to gg grandparents. I'd like them to know more about our ancestors, or we tell stories and say what we love about those in our immediate family. 

   

After the daily devotions, the kids get to choose what they'd like to do. Sometimes it's only one thing, like reading lots of books, and sometimes it's almost everything in the basket.

•  Nature Study, since we live close to the Bear River Bird Refuge, we spend a lot of time on birds. I know for sure that Little Miss 1.5 will choose "bds!" She loves them, points out every. single. bird. she sees, and we have a fun sticker book with pictures of actual birds that she likes us to take off so she can put them back on. We also have a bird guide for the Western States, so we've looked through that to learn more about birds we've seen. Mister 3.5 LOVES Peregrine Falcons, probably because I told him they can fly faster than a car! We've looked up quite a bit about those. I love living close to the bird refuge because we've seen more birds than I've ever identified before! Let's be honest, before we moved here I didn't really identify any birds, but being here has inspired the "birder" in me. I hope to start a nature walk every morning along with some yoga... maybe when we start school... 
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• Read a-louds, the kids always want to read fun books and the classics with lessons inside make it a deeper experience. My new favorite is The Little Engine that Could! I remembered it was about an engine going over a hill, but forgot things like the engines who wouldn't help the children. Part of the lesson is being willing to help, even if you are little!  
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• Mr. 3.5 and Miss 1.5 usually choose "Word of the Day!" or "du-day" to Little Miss (this is a post about it http://ouradventuresinplay.blogspot.com/2017/03/word-of-day.html). I helped my 6 yr old write letters on some cards, then we decide on a word from activities from the day before, get the letters to build the word, then the kids run to hide them! Someone else gets to find them, with Mr. 3.5 usually telling them where to look, then we make the word together, talking about capitals and lowercase letters, blending sounds etc. 
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• Character Building: Mr. 6 loves "antique" gadgets, and he was fascinated with a tape/cd player at Grandma Robinson's when we stayed there. Grandma gave us a little tape player, and my sister found some tapes of Janeen Brady's Standin' Tall Series, which has themed character stories and songs for themes like honesty, obedience, & gratitude. Mr. 6 likes to listen to the tapes and read along, or we have some of the Value Tales stories with the same types of topics, but they're applied to heroes from history, like Harriet Tubman and the Value of Helping. 
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• Culture/music. A lot of families go over classical music, time periods, composers etc. BUT as I was thinking of what I wanted to do music-wise, I found this neat book & cd in our collection about "forgotten" indigenous cultures and their music from around the world. We'll probably get to classical music at some point, but so far this has been fascinating. Did you know there were indigenous tribes in Japan and Taiwan? I didn't. For this study (usually my idea) we go over the culture a little bit, listen to the music, and we find the country on our globe ball. Maybe some day we'll also get a real globe, but this works for now, at least it hasn't been lost even thought the kiddos keep trying to throw it around like a ball that it technically is! 
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• Art Study- I found these neat cards about famous pieces of art. They're perfect for my kids (and me) because besides the picture, it has information about the painting and artist on the back, and tells things to look for. Mr. 6 is usually the one to choose art, so he chooses a card, then we go over things like the way they made the picture, colors shades etc. and for one we looked up how to do a wood carving for prints like they did in Japan hundreds of years ago. I'm toying with the idea of doing a project to go along with the cards, maybe once a week. We could do things like put some paper on a the underside of a table, then have the kids paint upside down for studying Michelangelo. We'll probably do that once school starts! A morning basket blogger suggested the cards from Usborne and they have been great (I just signed up to be a consultant, but these shipped all the way from England. Now I know where to get things like this, and if you want some, let me know). 
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• Notebooks: we have a notebook for nature observations where we write about the weather. I planned on doing something like a family nature study journal, but so far that hasn't happened. Then we have a notebook for questions and answers- we write down questions we have, with the question that started it all from Mr. 6: "How are baby worms born?" If you don't know the answer that one you should look it up, I guarantee it'll blow your mind! We look up the question, usually on Youtube since Mr. 6 asks how things like roller coasters or toothbrushes are made and I have no idea, or Mr. 3 asks things like, "What do insects eat?" It's great to have a specific place for questions or observations. 
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• This dice is for exercising and "yoga animals." Mr. 6 usually chooses it, and they all want to throw the dice, then I look on our cheat sheet to see what they should do. For example, first if they chose yoga animals, 1= lion, so they act like a lion stretching, or just running on all fours like crazy. Other exercises would be 1= burpees, then they throw it again to see how many to do. This is a fun one to get out some energy that is ALWAYS pent up in these kiddos! I swear I have the most hyper kids alive, which is good if you're only "wildschooling," but sometimes I do want them to sit still for 10 minutes! This helps get out some wiggles, and things usually don't go back to calm after this, so we're done for the day.
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That's all for ours, but here's the quote again: "I wanted them to feast their hearts, souls and minds on fine literature, awe-inspiring art, majestic music, and great thoughts. I wanted them to learn how to think— not just learn to pass a test. I wanted them to be prepared intellectually, spiritually, morally and academically to pursue wholeheartedly whatever passion was on their hearts for the future," (Taylor-Hough, Deborah. A Twaddle-Free Education.) I think that Morning Baskets help with all of those ideas, and if you feel the same you could try them. If you do, please share what's in your basket!