We have been doing Morning Basket with the girls now for a year and a half! That is a year and a half of beautiful mornings together. I’m not trying to be cheesy. Let’s be real. The rest of our day is just as nuts as anyone else’s. But mornings, with our Morning Basket, are 95% of the time peaceful. We now do Morning Basket 4 days a week; Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. The only reason we do not do it on Thursdays is because now Lilly Belle and I are at her day school all day and leave by 7:45/8am to get there by 9am.
Lucy has had Morning Basket as a part of her life since she was just 6 months old! That is how old she was when we started, and she has always sat with us. For her, it is all she knows. I love that.
July and August were rough for Morning Basket and were the first months since starting where we skipped days. Lilly Belle was in 6 summer camps, we were in Seattle for 3 weeks and…I’ve been pregnant and not feeling well in the morning. Once we got home from Seattle I was about 7 weeks pregnant and we tried something new. We brought our basket down to the living room rug. From there I mostly just read to them. If there was a morning where I didn’t feel sick, we still did our normal routine of sitting at the table with breakfast together.
I am excited for September because I am now about 10 1/2 weeks and feeling a little better and getting closer and closer to feeling like myself. Getting closer to that 2nd trimester energy boost. We are started to get into the fall spirit around here and the girls are going to be so excited to see the new autumn themed activities I am including for them. We are getting to my absolute favorite time of the year here in Florida! Knowing that we are now getting closer and closer to cooler weather. Weather where we can play outside in the afternoon and spend as much time as we want at Disney surrounded by all the holiday goodness!
I’ve included a bit more for Lucy now as well because she is starting to really want to do school with us. She is 22 months old now.
I always include three main items into our Morning Basket: Bible, Poetry and Fairytales. This month we are continuing with our Jesus Storybook Bible per Lilly Belle’s request, but we are switching our poetry and fairytale selection.
Bible: Jesus Storybook Bible – this is by far my favorite children’s bible. Both of the girls love listening to the stories. Each story is the perfect length for the girls to sit through and explains things in a way that is easy for them to understand.
Poetry: Poetry Teatime Companion – Julie Bogart has been a huge inspiration for me in our homeschool. I love her podcast! This will be our first month using this book for our poetry time together and I think Lilly Belle will really enjoy that they aren’t “baby poems”. One of the girls in our class comes in to day school each week with a new poem that she has written and memorized to recite to us. Lilly Belle is now on a mission to be able to do the same.
Fairytales: Usborne Picture Book Gift Set – This is new to us. I am an Usborne consultant and have been eyeing this set for the girls forever. I think it will be really fun and exciting for the girls to hear a new story each morning.
For the rest of our basket, I like to add things that are interests of the girls, seasonal, life skills we are working on (phone number, address, name, etc.), or something I feel they should be learning about.
Here are this month’s extra fun morning basket additions (some are the same as last month)…
Geography and Science: Atlas of Animal Adventures – This book is amazing. The girls loved it last month and I wish we had time last month to do it more. I kept it in for this month. We open it up, read all about that animal and then find the country they are from on our globe. Then we head over to YouTube and watch videos of what we learned about. We save this for last since once we head to YouTube I lose the girls interest in the rest of the basket.
Math: My First Math Book – Lilly Belle is obsessed with this book so I kept it in again per her request. She saw I was switching our basket and asked that I keep this in. We do 2-5 pages/morning. Some of the pages are extremely challenging for her and she loves that with math.
Sight Words: Fall Primer Sight Word Play & Learn Pack – Lilly Belle now knows all her PrePrimer Sight Words so I created this pack with her in mind. She’s ready to learn the Primer words and so we will be playing all of these fun games during our Morning Basket time together.
Additional Learning Fun: Preschool/Kindergarten Fall Learning Pack – This pack is so much fun and perfect for families who do not celebrate Halloween but love the fall! It is of course also perfect for families like ours who are obsessed with Halloween 😉 I did not include any “Halloween” activities in this pack, it is just all fall themed; pumpkins, leaves and apples. There are activities that Lucy can do with us too!
Reading: Ready 2 Read Level 2 – I purchased this for Lilly Belle a while ago. We have not been using it as it was meant to be used, but have been using it in bits and pieces and it’s helped her a lot. Currently we are using a chart that I printed from Level 2 on Blends and Digraphs. Right now I just want her to have these memorized to help her with her fluency while trying to sound out new words.
And now for Lucy. Lucy is really into sorting and colors right now so those are our main focus for her at this time.
Colors: Red Car, Green Car – This book is adorable and so simple. It really keeps her attention and she loves it.
Sorting: Bitty Beginnings Autumn Set – I have included an apple matching activity in our basket for her to use this month. This set will have her matching by size and color so I’m not sure if she will be able to do it or not, but she’s going to love trying and playing with this.
Matching: Bitty Beginnings Autumn Set – I have also included a matching activity for her. She has so far only sorted colors so I’m interested to see if she can now match pictures. There was a time when she was around 16 months old where she was matching but then stopped for a while. I haven’t tried to get it out again but I’m excited to see what she does with this.
And that does it for September. I’m already excited for October’s basket…Halloween is our favorite holiday (Lilly Belle and I) so we always go big with this one. For October and December, we pretty much throw out all of our regular curriculum and dive full on to celebrate Halloween and in December the same for Christmas. Morning Basket becomes school and the rest of the day is filled with crafts and FUN!