Morning Book Basket: How To Do It

 

 

 

Morning Time Transformed

I’m not a morning person. Let me just say that right off. Our whole married life my husband has ribbed me about not talking in the morning. I can’t help it. It’s just the way I am, okay.

So, when I heard Julie Bogart from Brave writer tell about her morning book basket time when her children were little, I thought that there’s no way I could do that.

But here’s what I discovered. I can. It’s wasn’t fun at first, but getting a slow, relaxed start to our school day made it much more enjoyable than just jumping right into math or spelling. And you know what? I’ve gotten better and better at it.

We’re relaxed homeschoolers. We used morning time to ease into our day and I include a book basket in that period of time.

For some people morning time can consist of reading, devotions, prayer, singing hymns, memory work, map work, poetry. Anything that floats your boat, basically.

What’s a Morning Book Basket?

Some people call it morning time, reading hour, or morning circle. Since it’s included in our morning time, I call it book basket time.

A morning book basket is a basket or bag with books we’re reading at the time. Before we do anything in our school day we spend time reading these books or listening to them on audio.

Let your kids ease into your school day coloring, drawing, or playing with legos and blocks while you read a good quality book. It really sets the tone for the day.

Here is what I have found, when we are rushed for time and skip right into math instead of our morning book basket, everybody is a little more on edge the rest of the morning. If we only have a limited time for school that day, the book basket is my priority.

I use a basket from the dollar store that cost like, $5.00. But, my dream basket is this baby…

 

A Pioneer Woman basket.

Isn’t it dreamy?

What’s in Our Morning Book Basket?

I try to use a read aloud that goes along with our history or science, a book we enjoy, picture books (Sarah Mckenzie has some wonderful book lists), the bible or a devotion ,and world kids magazine. Last year I added in our science and history books we were using and it worked out well.

Throughout the reading I’ll ask questions or ask someone to narrate back to me what they heard me read. Afterwards, I have the kids notebook their history or science lessons.

This isn’t something my kids just completely enjoyed at the beginning. I had one child out of four who enjoyed it. It took time, but as they got used to having to play quietly and listen, it got easier for them.

Some of Our Favorite Books

Here are a few of our favorite read alouds for our basket

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Hank the Cowdog by John Erickson

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

The Squire and the Scroll by Jennie Bishop

The Princess and the Kiss by Jennie Bishop

The 20th Century Children’s Book Treasury

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

Any Dr. Seuss book

Window on the World by Daphne Spragget and Jill Johnstone

Kingdom Tales By David and Karen Maines

Enjoy a Relaxed Homeschool Experience

It’s taken time for me to get to this point. I wasn’t always this relaxed about our school work. However, the more research I do, the more I see the benefits of being a read aloud family and how it can grow a child’s mind far more than mathematics. As in, a rich vocabulary and colorful imagination.

Not that I don’t teach my kids math. It’s just not the top priority anymore. My job as my kids educator is to make sure my kids know how to learn and the rest will come. For a more relaxed homeschool I like to use copywork to simplify our homeschool and teach language arts.

Your homeschool experience doesn’t have to be a rigid, public school at home homeschool. You don’t have to imitate what the public schools do. Relax and enjoy your homeschool and your time with your kids.

It’s a real simple system that we all enjoy and it makes learning easy. Who says learning has to be hard?

What do your mornings look like? Are they all you want them to be? Drop a comment below.

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