We are now in the big waiting game phase with our baby! I’m 36 weeks now. I have a feeling our little guy will be closer to on time, but mentally and physically I can tell my body is like, “oh hey – you usually only have a couple weeks to go…you’re almost done!” The nesting is real and I’m getting so antsy and excited to meet our sweet boy. And a bit nervous about labor/delivery again because, well…is there anyone ever not a bit nervous about that?
We are now also in a phase of leaving the house as minimally as possible. This includes me having to run must-do errands (bank, post office) or taking Lilly Belle and Lucy to their dance classes or our once/week story time. Matt is now working from home so he can help me as much as possible for these last few weeks. So, we’re all going to be home a lot for the next few months. This gives us tons of time for Morning Basket each morning so I crammed this baby full of learning goodness! I’m really trying to let things go right now and not freak out if we don’t get to all the things with homeschool. It is a season and will be a short season. I know once our sweet boy is here, we will slowly but surely start getting into a routine. It’s a serious limbo right now.
A few mornings ago the girls were beyond excited when they woke up and saw what I put together in the middle of the night for them. No, literally. I put this basket together at 3:30am while I couldn’t sleep. Figure I might as well be productive if I’m wide awake.
We’ll be spending most all of our morning doing Morning Basket together unless I have a doctor appointment or the girls have story time.
Here are all the goodies I’ve included for this month! I should mention, when I’m putting our basket together I think about how much goodness and learning can I bring into our mornings together. What can they learn that is new? What do they love? What brings them joy? What brings me joy? What brings us together? What starts our day of smoothly?
Bible: This month we are switching things up. We have now read all the way through the Jesus Storybook Bible 2 or 3 times and the girls love it, but I felt they needed to switch things up a little. Lilly Belle has been having a lot of questions lately, and questioning a lot lately and so I want to give her a diversity in learning so it’s not all coming from the same exact text and stories. We got out our My First Bible and Prayers again and it was a lot of fun to read from it again this morning! I bought it last spring and we get it out from time to time.
Fairytales: I got out one of our favorite fairy tale books for this month, the Mary Engelbreit 5 Minute Fairty Tales. The length of these stories are perfect and the illustrations are so cute. Our girls really enjoy these stories.
Poetry: Instead of our usual poetry books, this month I put our Usborne Musical Nursery Rhymes book back in our basket and the girls were beyond excited to see it there. It is always a favorite for both of them. We have had it in our basket on and off since Lucy was a baby. Lilly Belle was excited to be reading from it this morning by herself!
Fun Additions:
Usborne Lift the Flap Word Book: This book is great for both of our girls. Lilly Belle can read the words and Lucy likes to lift the flaps, repeat the words and find the pictures. It is great for Lucy’s vocabulary and speech and awesome for Lilly Belle to read with confidence. We will just do a page or two at a time.
Spanish Practice: I found this Paint Shop Matching Activity in the Target Dollar Spot. It has both english and spanish color words on it. Lucy sat and matched the colors while I read to the girls today and then when Lucy was done playing with it, Lilly Belle flipped them all over and had to match just by reading the spanish word and finding it’s matching paint can color. Lilly Belle will for sure have all of her spanish color words down this month from this game.
Character Building: We are so excited about the Big Life Journal Three Seas cards we received for our family. Each of the cards build conversations for families to talk about together. There are 52 cards with different conversation topics. This morning our question was, “what quality do you look for in a friend?” It led to a great conversation between Matt, Lilly Belle and I.
We have also included the Usborne Be Brave book. Lilly Belle has been loving this activity book so much! We keep it to 1-2 pages a day even though she begs to do more. If I let her, she would do the whole book in one sitting. I really want the ideas and concepts in the book to really sink in with her though so we are going through this book very slowly.
Handwriting: I added in two of our Chalkfull of Design boards. I have one small one for Lucy to color all over and the large alphabet board for Lilly Belle to trace.
Math: Lilly Belle’s favorite activity book has been this, My First Math Book! We have only used it during our Morning Basket time this year and she gets beyond excited when I get it out again. She would sit and finish the whole book at once if I’d let her! It challenges her and each page is completely different. It’s been great extra practice. I am actually thinking about getting a second book, tearing out all the pages and putting them in page protectors in a binder so she can use it over and over again until she has it too memorized. It’s been so great!
Art: I added in The Usborne Big Drawing Book so that we could learn how to draw some fun pictures together. I’m pretty terrible at drawing and wish I was better so this will be fun for us to do together.
Additional Read Aloud Stories: We are reading through Dumbo right now just a few pages a day until baby brother is born. It was Matt’s favorite movie as a little boy and our baby’s nursery is all elephants and we have Dumbo in his crib. There is more special to it that we will explain after he is born as well. The girls have been having fun reading the story together. We are also reading the last 3 books in the Zoey and Sassafras series! Lilly Belle and Lucy both love these. We read the first two earlier in the fall and it has been fun to get into them again. We have been reading a few chapters during Morning Basket and then again with another chapter before bedtime. If you haven’t checked out Zoey and Sassafrass, I highly recommend them. They are all about a little girl who discovers magical animals and does tons of science experiments. Lilly Belle has learned so much about science from these books. We haven’t done any actual science lessons really this year, so I love that these books are so full of science goodness!
For Lucy: Our last addition this month is The Usborne Big Book of ABC. This is a newer Usborne book and Lucy loves it! Matt has been sitting with Lucy on the couch and reading this with her in the morning while Lilly Belle is working on her math book with me.
The girls are really loving this month’s basket because it really has been different everyday for them. We don’t ever get to all of it and we do it a bit different every morning. Most days we do it sitting at the table while eating breakfast, but sitting on our wooden kitchen chairs for so long is getting super uncomfortable for me so we’ve recently moved over to the couch for Morning Basket time. Today we are doing it different than we’ve ever done it because I have a ton of work to do today. I am finishing a project for work, then sitting with them to do something from our basket. I’m alternating like that all day today. It helps me to be able to work while still getting so spend so much quality time with them!
Hope you’ve found some goodies in this post that your kids will love! Happy March…it’s BABY MONTH! A