I am really excited to be sharing this with you. Our morning basket has been one of the best things to happen to our homeschool. It has been a constant in our day and something that we look forward to everyday. Preschool age children thrive in an environment with routine and consistency. We have also found that minimizing screen time minimizes tantrums and attitude. The entire feel of our home is much calmer on days without any screen time. I am not a morning person. Well, at least I haven’t been since being pregnant with Lucy. For a while, our go to morning routine was to have Lilly Belle watch a show or two while I woke up and got moving for the day. It always ended in a tantrum when it came time to turn it off and also evoked lots of attitude and just an overall blah feel to the morning.

Now that we have our morning basket, I have pre-prepped, low maintenance activities ready for us everyday. This basket will grow, change and evolve with our family. Right now it is just a basket for Lilly Belle, but as we get closer to Lucy being one, I will be adding things in there for her as well; things that she will just play with during morning time.

The goal with our morning basket, for our personal family, is to have educational activities and toys readily available for the early morning hours and for times when I need to get things done and Lilly Belle needs entertainment. It is a guarantee that she is learning each and every day. Homeschooling a preschooler comes with many distractions so our morning basket just keeps us on track.

So without further ado, I give you Our Morning Basket – June 2017 edition. Be sure to read through to the end because I am going to give you tons of great ideas to add to your own morning basket!

Our Morning Basket Contents

• Read Aloud Book/s – We are currently reading Pippi Longstocking. I love having this book here front and center in our basket. There have been so many times that I have went to grab this instead of grabbing for the remote. I read it to the girls in the morning, while they are playing, outside when they are swimming in their little pool, during bath time and at bedtime. I always put it back in our basket when we are done reading so it is ready for the next time we have an opportunity to read.
• Independent Writing Activities – I will always have things in this basket for Lilly Belle to work on independently. These are great to grab when I need to do a load of laundry or tend to Lucy. Not shown in this photo is a little pen basket we keep in our morning basket filled with dry erase markers, pencils and a chalk marker. Our current go-to writing activities are: Bitty Beginnings Write and Wipe Activity Cards and Chalkfull of Design Trace-n-Erase Travel Set. I also have a little Target wipe-clean alphabet book in here that I recently found in our Dollar Spot.
• Who Was Books – Lilly Belle calls these “the books with big heads”. She really loves learning about people and these books are so educational and make for great read alouds. We are currently reading Who Was Walt Disney and she loves it because of our Disney connection and also because she is named after his wife, Lillian Disney. The Who Was series has tons of books. We will always keep one of these in our morning basket for a quick history lesson and fun reading for our whole family.
• Explode the Code Workbook – We currently have our Get Ready for the Code Book A in our morning basket as that is the book she is currently working through. I also keep a few sheets of stickers tucked into the workbook and she gets a sticker on each page she completes with neatness and care. This workbook has been amazing. I will be doing a whole separate post on our love for this curriculum because I love it so much.
• Story Journal – This Picture Story Journal is fantastic! Each morning I have Lilly Belle color a story on the top half of the page and then she tells me what she drew. I write it out for her and she copies under. This makes great copy work practice and handwriting work.
• Nature Journal – I purchased a large sketchbook at the FPEA Homeschool Convention to act as this year’s Nature Journal. My plan for this for our PreK year is that when we are out at the park or on a walk and come across interesting nature that we will either bring it home or take a picture. We will then use her watercolor set or colored pencils to draw that nature and study it further when she has interest sparked. I want our Nature Journal here always so that it reminds us to take nature in a bit more. Nature is something that always makes me feel better, but living in a apartment and in FL, nature is not something that is always easy to get to. Having this here acts as a reminder to get out and explore.
• Pattern Tracing Board – This is another little activity that I have been having Lilly Belle do a few times a day. She uses this Pattern Tracing Board from Sensory Play and the eraser end of a #2 pencil and traces each row. Just a good writing and fine motor skills exercise for her. Lucy, who is just 7 months old right now, likes to touch it and play with it as well – obviously in a bit different way.
• Geography Book – We currently have our The 50 States book tucked into our morning basket to coincide with our brand new Map of the U.S.A Puzzle from Mudpuppy. Matt loves maps and teaching Lilly Belle about where we live and different US landmarks, so this is something fun for them to do together. We love this book as it takes you through each state in a way that is fun for kids to see and listen to. The illustrations are beautiful. I will be doing a separate post on this along with our amazing new puzzle.

Our basket will be ever changing. I love putting it together and I love looking at it. It is a beautiful reminder of what we are doing here with our children and it really brings us together. I will continue to do posts when our basket changes. It will be fun to look back and see what our girls were learning and what we were doing together as a family and I really hope it helps to spark some ideas for you and your family!

Here are some more ideas for you to add to your family’s preschool morning basket:

• Let’s Play School Bingo Set
• Usborne Activity Books
• Coloring Books and Crayons
• Go Fish Playing Cards
• Create and Tell Me a Story Cards
• Flashcards

I also have put together a YouTube video for you all to see our morning basket!

Our Morning Basket YouTube Video Link

Happy Learning!