How We Use Our Breakfast Basket for Homeschool
All across the internet in homeschool groups or on Pinterest, you will see the popular “morning basket” being mentioned. It’s a homeschool “thing” that you’ll probably enjoy and may already be doing on your own! In fact, we actually started a morning basket over the summer and I hadn’t even realized it until I started to see the trend on Pinterest.
We tried the morning basket this year for the first few weeks, but things didn’t really seem to flow well. The children would get dressed, tidy their rooms and then gather on the sofa to do our morning basket. However with a baby and a toddler, it was hard to gather everyone’s attention and ensure that everyone could see our books. There was always a toddler rolling trucks loudly or doing cartwheels across the floor. I knew something could be better about this and more functional for our family.
Enter the breakfast basket! Our basket is now a part of our breakfast each morning and we love it. While the children eat, I do our read alouds and then each child’s flash cards. There attention is 100% there because they are busy eating and sitting still. Even my toddler is much more patient and quiet during this time. I have even included fun color/shape flash cards for him so he can feel included and have his own attention. We plan to move onto number cards and ABC cards eventually with him.
In the basket we have our devotionals, bible stores, poetry, flash cards for memorization, read aloud books, and occasionally there may be a small, fun activity. The goal of the breakfast basket is to create a place where all of our “extras” that we do have a place to stay that is easy to access. Many of these extras are not a part of our curriculum, but are added on to help us grow in faith and virtue and as a family. Some of the items may be supplemental to our curriculum - such as the flash cards. Some books or fun worksheets may be season worksheets or to go along with a reading.
After our breakfast basket is complete and the children have eaten breakfast, we get dressed and tidy up for school. I place our items back into the basket and lay out morning work for them to come to while they wait for me to finish getting dressed or tidying up. This isn’t to say that each day is exactly the same, or that it even all flows so well. There’s always bumps and bruises along the way.
Whether you have a morning basket, a breakfast basket or no basket at all, I hope you find a way to gather at some point in the day for some quality family time that involves some wonderful literature and maybe a sprinkle of Jesus if that’s your jam!
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