How We Use a Morning Basket in Our Homeschool
What is a morning basket?
Morning basket is what homeschoolers call the first things that are done to start the school day. Some use it as a time to warm-up the brain, to do fun activities, to do all of the gathered family subjects, or to just read a few fun books. For our family, this is our family devotion time.
Our Morning Basket time starts off each homeschool day focusing our family on the things that are most important to us and our homeschool – a time of devotion, hymn singing, and prayer. Pointing my children to Jesus each and every day is my main priority. I start every homeschool day making sure that this is accomplished.
Singing a Hymn
The first thing we do is sing a hymn together. This is usually our hymn of the month at our church- a hymn that is sung every Sunday evening at our prayer service and changes with each new month. If we do not sing that hymn we will typically sing the Doxology together (praise God from whom all blessings flow). Our church uses the Hymns of Grace hymnal, so we have a family copy. This hymnal is full of historic hymns as well as new hymns.
Catechism
Teaching through one of our historic Reformed Baptist catechisms is super important to our family. These are questions and answers that teach our doctrines and are saturated with the scriptures. Although we don’t expect our children to memorize the answers yet, they already have several memorized. Currently we are using the Baptist Catechism also known as Keach’s Catechism. This church’s website includes the answers put to music. My children have enjoyed learning the answers that way. We also enjoy the Illustrated Baptist Catechism by Paul Cox.
Family Devotional
The next part of our morning basket is our family devotional. Right now we are using Our 24 Family Ways by Clay Clarkson. This devotion includes discussion questions, scripture to read, teaching points, and a guide to prayer each day. There are even coloring pages in the back that we like to make copies of and allow my children to color while they listen. Our 6-year-old and almost-5-year-old can easily follow along and answer the questions. I mostly emphasize the scripture we read and the certain family way we are working on that week. I like to keep this time short so that my children can retain what is being taught.
Prayer Time
We close our morning basket time with prayer. I pray for my children and what we have just discussed in our devotion. I pray for my husband, for myself, and any other specific requests that we are aware of within our family, church, the world, or otherwise. We teach our children to come before the Lord with fear and reverence before we pray.
How long does this take?
My children are 6 years old and under (6, 4, 3, 1, and 11 months). We keep it short and sweet! It usually takes us about 15 minutes to finish this morning basket time together. Any longer and my children will not retain the information.
Literature
At the end of our morning basket, my children play outside while I read our literature selection to them. We are currently reading books by EB White for this school year. We have finished Charlotte’s Web and we are close to finishing The Trumpet of the Swan. These have been wonderful classics for my children to hear and I am often surprised at how well they listen.
