Morning Baskets

      I did another post about our morning baskets about a year ago so I figure it's about time to do an updated post since things have changed a bit. Look here https://learningbystudyfaithfun.blogspot.com/2018/04/morning-baskets-whats-in-yours.html for more info. on Morning Baskets, which are basically baskets with beautiful things inside that you want to study together. The nice thing about the basket is that it can be ever-changing and evolving depending on needs and interests of the kids. It's a GREAT idea, so thank you to whomever came up with it. Now that we've been doing it for about a year, it's not all in one basket. During the year the morning basket exploded with TOO many good things (see below)!

When I took this picture I decided it was time to be more organized. We started a Morning Box, with devotional items to do while we eat breakfast, then we get the basket out for Table Time- our formal academic time, and Poetry Tea Time with poems to eat while we snack. We can call all of this our Morning Basket Loveliness, since it all started with a basket.

What's Inside our Morning Box:

• Scripture Stories and the actual scriptures- right now we're in Alma in the Book of Mormon. I usually read the kid stories, then a few verses of actual scripture so the kids can get used to the language. 
• Hymn or Primary Song (I don't actually have a book, but we go over them from church)
• Ancestor Book- I am working on a book about our Pioneer Ancestors, so that might be our ancestor stories for the year. This is a photo book with photos of people in our family. 

• Memory Work: We are memorizing "The Living Christ, the testimony of the apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints" It's a one page document, but with sentences starting with, "As we commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ two millennia ago," it's taking us awhile to memorize the whole thing! We've got these fun cards with a picture to help remember the words, and it'll probably be next year before we're through and that's great. 

• Other memorized poems that are fun to go over. Since we started memorizing LC we haven't added more, but about once a week we go over our fun poems like, "Come little Leaves."

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I wrote poems on little cards and also put them on the ring. 

• Copywork: I just found a site that has copywork (copying words and sentences) from the Living Christ, so we'll add that to our memorizing. It's always good to get in writing practice, and while we do daily journals (below), I also want Mr. 7 to get used to writing and understanding capitals, periods, commas etc.  http://www.alivelyhope.com/2017/09/the-living-christ-memorization-and.html

• Journals- I read a book about homeschoolers in the 80's whose children went to Ivy League schools, and one thing that caught my attention was their writing plan. They had their kids do writing for real things, like writing a daily journal about what they were doing, when veggies were planted etc. then asked them to find out when they planted what the next year. They also wrote letters to friends and family, so they could see that there is a point to writing- communication and documenting! We started writing in our journals, with some dictation and some actual writing by the kids. Every day Miss 2.5 says she had fun, "Swiding in the weaves (sliding in the leaves)," which was something she did months ago. We're working understanding the actual day... 

Table Time Schedule:

• Prayer to start the day
• Pledge of Allegiance
• Calendar and Weather- with sticky notes to put on the calendar each day, then at the end of the month we make a chart to compare the days (4 boxes filled in for rain etc.) 

  

                                                                  Wind and Sun

• If we have postcards from the "Give Your Child the World" group, we hang them up and color the state with a line to it. Mr. 7 made his own mail box that I put them in after we go to the real post office! We aren't done with the Voice of Forgotten Worlds yet, so we'll listen to the songs of indigenous people with our cultural studies in their countries. 

  

• Fine Art: We'll put an Usborne art card or Artist book up with the calendar to study for the week, then do a project like the artist on Fridays. 

 

 Seurat's "Pointilism" with dots and dashes- it's a lot harder than it looks!

•  A Math Masters activity from Kimber Academy, and Word of the Day. For word of the day we've started with a letter (M today), then come up with a word(s) that starts with the letter (moon and mom), then hide the cards with the letters for the other kids to find, then we make the word together. We made cute little homemade ABC books for the kids to write in, with a page for the letter, word and a picture. I also found some fun pages for practicing writing the letters for Mr. 4.5. [This actually makes it turn into a looong Table Time, so I might do this once a week]

 

 

• Choosing a Shelf of the Day- I've got a shelf for different topics I want to cover, with books and cards that go with the theme. Character Studies on Tuesdays (Daddy has Mondays off so it's our "Saturday"), Nature Studies on Wednesdays (Using the Exploring Nature With Children curriculum), Skip Thursdays since Mr. 7 will be at a charter school with their distance ed program, Culture studies on Fridays (Give Your Child the World facebook group and Voices of Forgotten Worlds book/cd), and Art/science projects on Saturdays. 
• After all of this mom chosen stuff, the kids get to choose! Lately it's been Uno every time- which is great for our 2 yr old to study colors, and good for the boys to practice following rules and being good sports. I'll probably set out a few things for them to choose, like our manipulatives, magnet letters, steam challenges etc.

• Reading Time- we joined a fabulous book club this summer based on the book, "Give Your Child the World," and we've gone over a different continent every week since we started it. We'll be reading books from other countries as well as study their culture: go over artwork, animals, clothes, food, music and dancing from their cultures. When we only read Voices of Forgotten Worlds the kids weren't too interested, so I'm glad I found something more exciting! When I first heard of it, I went to the book mobile (we live in a tiny town) to see what books they had. The driver said, "I don't have any of those books out because they're old and people weren't interested." How sad! Thankfully I went to Bear River City's little community library, run by volunteers and donated books, and they had TONS. My faith in small towns was restored. There's also a lot of the books suggested in the GYCW book being read on Youtube so we watch them.   

Middle East Week

• I got this cute book with animal ideas and movement, so I'm planning on throwing the dice,  finding that page and doing the actions.

  

Poetry Tea Time (aka: afternoon snack) 

• A couple of things are in the morning box for our Poetry Tea Time. We have a book of poems by Mattie Stepanek and Robert Louis Stevenson, and we do Brain Quest questions! There are lots of fun questions for different ages, that make it easy to see what my kids know without pressure like a test. 

That is our day with the studies we do together. They also have some personal study time with math and reading (I love online programs for this!)

"What do you like about table time?"
Mr. 4.5 says, "Choosing." 

Ms 2.5 says, "Uno!"

Mr, 7 says, "Uno!" too. 

     Not exactly great and beautiful thoughts, but I think they get enough all together. Maybe I should put more choice in all of this? As always it's a work in progress.