We are about to begin our 3rd year of homeschooling in a week! I am so excited and just astounded at how fast 2 years have gone. Last year was the first year I implemented a morning basket to our homeschool routine. You can check it out here for more ideas. What is a morning basket? It’s where you have different subjects, concepts, or anything you want to do to ease into your homeschool each day. Down below I will be sharing our secular morning basket ideas.
I, now, am changing out books every month for our secular morning basket and the kids have enjoyed it so much. If you would like a more themed morning basket you can check out my January Morning Basket and February Morning Basket posts.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. I receive a small amount of compensation if you choose to purchase from my links. I only link to products I love.
Secular Morning Basket Ideas
Books
Of course, books are in our morning baskets. I love books so much and so do my children. This brings so much joy to my heart because they love them as much as I do.
When Green Becomes Tomatoes
I am so, so excited for this book. It is a poetry book with short poems that go through seasons and months of the year. Most are very short and sweet. I really enjoy that there are dates assigned to the poem. So I know exactly when we will be reading this book.
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: The Poetry of Mister Rogers
Over the summer we did a unit on Mister Rogers and used this book throughout that unit but I still implement it. His poetry is so sweet and perfect my little ones to understand.
Hidden Tales from Eastern Europe
Last winter I had found this book and saved because I knew I wanted to use it for our morning basket this year. I am so excited to read this. It has only eight stories but I feel like we can always expand on it as well. I love learning about different parts of the world and I thought this could add more culture to our homeschool.
Where’s Waldo
I added this because sometimes it takes us a minute to get going. I thought this could be a great independent book that the children could sit down and do together.
Our Read Alouds
In our morning basket, I like to keep our current read-aloud there. Some mornings we love to just ease in by just reading together, especially on those gloomy days. Below I am sharing a list of our favorite read alouds.
Creative Writing
This year I am implementing more creative writing for my boys now that my youngest can read. One thing I have done is created different writing prompts for each morning. They are allowed to write what they want from the prompts in their journals or the newspaper article worksheet I created for them. They love writing newspaper articles more than anything. Sometimes I will get them to use the article for one of our science or history units we are studying. It is a fun way to easily get them to write and create. You can purchase the newspaper article for $1 at the link above.
Games
Just as last year I will be sticking with some of the same games we played. Games are always a win with my children. They get so excited when we play them I absolutely love it. This year I am incorporating a new game, Money Bags! So, my children are having some difficulty grasping money and I have heard so many wonderful things about this game. I am so excited to incorporate this into our morning basket.
Another game I am adding to our basket is Rush Hour. My kids love this game. It’s one that really pushes their thinking skills and it allows them to work together.
Gratitude Journal
We did this daily during our school year into our summer break. This is something that has become a habit in our home and I am so grateful (no pun intended) for it. I get them to write out 10 things they are grateful for each morning. Sometimes it’s easy for them and other times it can be hard. Gratitude is such an important aspect of life that is forgotten about. Here you can read about 5 easy ways to teach your children gratitude.
Play-Doh, Kinetic Sand, and Coloring
Just like last year, I have these in my basket to have them play with while read alouds are being read. This helps them concentrate better and keeps them occupied. This is what works for our family.
I hope these secular morning basket ideas have helped when trying to create a morning basket. Remember your morning basket can be anything you want it to be. It doesn’t have to look like this. The freedom of it is to help your children and yourself in the mornings. Also, you know your children and what works for them. Stay peaceful!
5 thoughts on “Secular Morning Basket Ideas”
Comments are closed.