Our summer is flying by. Before we know it, we will be having our first day of Kindergarten and first day of toddler preschool with the girls. Our first day of school will be August 13th. Before then, Lilly Belle has two more summer camps and we have 3 weeks with family in Washington. On top of that we just moved and book club has taken off, keeping us all extremely busy. This past month was the first month that we skipped days of Morning Basket, and just as I suspected…our days have felt off. They have felt messy and unorganized and chaotic. When we do Morning Basket, our day starts peacefully which sets the pace for the entire rest of the day. It really is amazing.

So, I decided to switch our basket up one more time so that we are motivated to start back up amidst the chaos around us right now. I am so excited for the morning and to dive in to all of this with the girls.

For Both Girls

Poetry: Song Sticks – We are going to sing nursery rhymes to Lucy during this time instead of reading poems. Usually I have a poetry book I read from, but with all the craziness around here, I don’t have their attention for nearly as long as usual, so until things settle down around here, we will be singing some nursery rhymes to Lucy. We used the Song Sticks printable from Bitty Beginnings for these.

Bible: Lilly Belle has been begging to start this. I had it on her Kindergarten Curriculum shelf to start in August, but she wants to start it now. I bought her a Bible of her own to use along side her brand new Write the Word for Kids! She will be doing copy work from the Bible each morning. I also have their Princess Prayers book in here and we read one a day.

Fairytales: We are going to use our Fairytale time this month to get Pippi Longstocking out again. I think we may reread this together every summer because it’s just too good to not get to read again and again. Lilly Belle was obsessed last summer and I’m really excited to read it again to the girls. We will read 1 chapter a day.

For Lucy (19 Months):

Letter Work: I kept this book in the basket for her because she LOVES it. Every time I have done reading practice with Lilly Belle this month, Lucy runs over to the shelf pointing up at the basket saying “Ah Ah Ah”, she learned the sound for the letter O and now loves to find O in the book. She loves to practice “reading” with her big sister. So we have been going through the book a few times a week with her just saying all the letter sounds as I point to them with her. Now that she has been sleeping she is making a lot more sounds and taking off quite a bit with her learning, so I am curious to see if she knows all her sounds once she does start talking.

My First 100 Words: We just got this book from Usborne and it’s been a hit. Lucy loves to look at books that I can just point at pictures to for her. Her attention span is not very long while being read to, but if I can have her in my lap and just point at different pictures with her and say the names and talk about different things on the page, she would sit forever. She does this on her own all day long as well. You can be sure to find her at one of our bookshelves anytime you notice she’s quiet…which is many times a day. It’s always been her favorite place.

For Lilly Belle (almost 5):

Star Wars Kindergarten Math Skills: She really enjoys these Star Wars books. Matt is going to be watching the movies with her this summer so I thought this would be a fun time to get this workbook back out. It is mostly numbers to 20, addition and subtraction and she’s been flying through it.

Picture Story Journal: Lilly Belle is obsessed with these. We had one last year and now we are starting a new one as she is almost 5. I like to see the progress of her stories and handwriting. She draws a picture on top and then narrates for me. I write it for her while she narrates. I write on every other line and then she does copyworb under my writing. With this new fresh book, I am going to be having her focus on writing lowercase and uppercase when appropriate and keeping the size of her letters the correct size.

Usborne Lift the Flap Adding and Subtracting: We will be doing the beginning half of this book as the end starts to get into really large numbers. She loves all of the Usborne Lift the Flap books and girlfriend is obsessed with math, so this will be a good fit for her. I am excited to be using this as a resource for Kindergarten.

My First Math Book: Another math book because it is what she loves and we are in a hard season right now where she wants nothing to do with school. So, math it is! This book is adorable. The illustrations are perfect. Each has big bold pictures with few details. The questions are all written in a way that is very easy for her to understand and that she will not get overwhelmed with. The questions all seem to be just challenging enough to make her work a bit, but also not overwhelm her. We are going to do one page a day unless she wants to keep doing more.

Usborne Very First Reading books: We are now on books 2 and 3. This is a set you can find in my Usborne shop that takes children from the very beginning stages of reading, all the way to reading full books fluently. It is a little pricey, but if you join our Let’s Play School Book Club and get the 25% off, this would be an amazing thing to get in your cart! She loves the stories and looks forward to reading practice with them. The stories are short and silly and all very different. They keep her attention. She is at a point where she does not to read right now so we are taking things slow (again) and letting her go at her own pace (which is the right thing to do especially with reading)…Give this girl math all day and she won’t complain a bit. Mention reading with her and she gets all anxious and fears “failing”. Our Let’s Keep Playing School positive affirmation curriculum is going to come in very handy with her…there is a reason I created it 😉

Roald Dahl’s Scrumdiddlyumptious Sticker Book: This book is adorable. We will do this book on the days when I know they aren’t going to stay at the table for anything past our main 3 (poetry, Bible, fairytale). We are going to be trying something new this month and go sit in Lucy’s room for Morning Basket once the girls are done eating. She has a desk in there and all her toys. We just got a new rug that is super cozy and the girls have been enjoying that space as it’s the only room in our home anything close to feeling like home. This book is filled with 3 short excerpts from Roald Dahl books and then there are stickers for each of the stories at the end.

I also have our Summer Reading cards from Bitty Beginnings in the basket so that we can write down our reading time together. I noticed tonight that there is a page that is almost completely filled with “Dear Zoo” as Lucy has been having us read it on repeat most everyday!

I am so excited about this basket and hope you found something here that you think your little ones will love too!