How to Plan a Morning Basket Routine for Toddlers, Preschoolers, and Kindergarteners

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Planning your homeschool routine can be overwhelming and often changes throughout the year. With lots of littles, this is often not only the case but typically the norm. So, how do you plan a morning basket routine with toddlers, preschoolers, and Kindergartners?

For our family, we found homeschool stability in our morning basket routine. By implementing this time as a family each and every morning, we found that our homeschool days began and ended smoothly. With twin preschoolers who were just toddlers when we started and a now Kindergartner, this is no easy feat.

Here are some of our tips and tricks for helping morning basket time run smoothly…or at least smoother (we aren’t perfect by any means :-).

If you are asking yourself “What is a morning basket?”, you might want to check out my blog post with a quick explanation before you begin the planning process.

1. Plan around meal times for read alouds

Morning basket does not have to be in the morning. However, for littles it can be helpful if basket time occurs during a meal or snack, especially for read alouds. Furthermore, by keeping littles focused on meals, we allow them to build the skills and stamina for morning basket later in their education.

2. Include activities or basic tinkering

In addition to a meal, we often plan games or handicrafts after meals are completed. This keeps littles occupied enough to be able to sit and listen to read alouds, memory verses, and engage in classical music appreciation. Here are a few quick activities that you can do with your littles during the morning basket you plan.

Dot pages
Coloring
Cutting practice
Playdough
Theraputty for developing hand strength
Stamps
Stickers (Check out my Idea Pin for a helpful sticker hack here.)
Lacing
Beads
Anything low maintenance and longer lasting

3. Include songs with motions

We love to have a weekly song with hand motions for the kiddos to work on as part of our morning basket. Research shows that singing songs in preschool can increase vocabulary and speech development, that was enough for me to make it a part of every weekly morning basket plan.

To ensure success, I always keep it in my back pocket for when we start to get a little too wiggly to focus. We stand, do our motions, and then are usually ready to get back to tinkering or read alouds. When planning our morning basket routine, songs and motions are always included week-to-week.
Here are a few of our favorite places to find hand motions and songs when planning our littles’ morning basket. Most of the time, I teach myself the motions with the videos found below and just play the track while teaching my littles the motions. However, every now and then I show them the video too.

Caiti’s Classroom on YouTube
Orange Kids Music | Preschool YouTube (Christian)
The Learning Station YouTube
Firefly Family Theater YouTube

4. Build background knowledge with age-appropriate themes and interests

As a former teacher with a background in arts integration and Project Based Learning, I cannot tell you how relieved I was to learn that homeschool families often utilize unit studies and themes. With that in mind, if you have not done so, definitely consider utilizing a common theme for your morning basket.

With my littles, I have found that no longer than 3 weeks (Advent/Christmas season) and no shorter than 1 week seems to be our sweet spot. For Morning Basket theme ideas, check out my Morning Basket Ideas and Resources board on Pinterest. You can also find ideas for Unit Studies on this Pinterest Board.

5. Use your theme to teach important vocabulary words with cards

Research shows that teaching vocabulary explicitly and through experience is an incredible way to develop a rich vocabulary in preschoolers. It is for this reason that we always create vocabulary cards and explicitly teach vocabulary for our theme. I post our words so that my husband and I remember to utilize them as much as possible during play and family interactions.
We review our vocabulary ring each morning and are very enthusiastic when the kiddos use a word during the week. One of my twins has delayed speech and this has been especially helpful for him. We try to incorporate action verbs in our vocabulary discussion as well.

6. Don’t be afraid of the classics

As you dig into the morning basket with your littles, maybe integrating the classics comes naturally for you. For our family, integrating the classics made me a little nervous. I was afraid composers, classical artists, and classic literature would be way too far over my kiddos heads.

Instead, I found that my kiddos loved listening to classical music and were engaged in games where they listened for specific instruments (great for developing phonemic awareness). In spite of this experience, I will be honest and say that poetry is still not something I am super excited to use with the kiddos. However, I have a new found confidence with introducing the classics to my 3 and 5 year olds.

Here are a few ways we helped to encourage excitement with the classics for our littles.

Episodes of “Little Einsteins” encouraged interest in art and music
Fantasia clips
Ballet or dance related to children’s stories, like the 1970s ballet “The Tales of Beatrix Potter”
Playing “I Spy” with works of art
Learning about specific instruments and their sounds, then using that to play phonemic awareness games
Relating music, art, poetry, etc. to our unit study
Visited art museums with child friendly exhibits

7. Cover daily schedules and routines

We always use a velcro rhythm board to help our kiddos know the routine for the day. This sets a purpose for our morning basket time outside of learning. They get excited for what is to come and it helps to set the pace of our day.

8. Use it as calendar time

Calendar time incorporates a lot of early math and numeracy skills. For our family, this is a wonderful time to get up from the table quickly and make observations about the weather, count the days, and talk about our emotions for the day. Calendar is a fantastic addition to our morning basket for the movement alone.
Here is the calendar we use, but there are simple printable ones that you can download and utilize also. Download a watercolor calendar with parts for manipulation here.

9. Know when to end

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame is a beautiful classic children’s chapter book. My 5 year-old daughter loves it. My twin 3 year-olds on the other hand, felt that something was left to be desired by our family read aloud.

However, despite the craziness my twins often exhibited this text taught me an important and valuable lesson. Knowing when to end your morning basket time, is just as important as the plans you carefully put into place.

It is for my own sanity and that of my children, that I stop in the middle or at the end of a quick task whenever I see warning signs from my three littles. Here are some of the signs I look for when deciding whether or not to continue the morning basket routine.

LOTS of wiggling in seats while eating
Inattention to me that cannot be remedied for long
Fussiness, boredom, or otherwise discontent behavior

We approach the above list with age appropriate attention spans in mind. We also try to redirect when possible, but often my husband or I will “call it” when it is becoming too negative an experience for ourselves or the kiddos. We are playing the long game and our end goal is establishing rhythm, curiosity, and a common place for family learning.

10. Establish a strong routine

My kiddos know what many of the elements of morning basket are and the order in which I typically do them. When I plan, I check off the elements during each session and this helps us to stay on track. If I have to abandon ship early, I have a list of things to hit on during lunch or later in the day.

In addition, this gives my kiddos some agency during our time. In fact, this morning my daughter asked me to read the bible before our morning prayer. I was happy to oblige her kindly worded request and thrilled that she was investing ownership in her own learning experience in a healthy and respectful way.

When kiddos know the routine, they are able to make requests and invest in the process more than if we keep the routine secret or too flexible. This kind of agency lends to higher engagement and deeper learning experiences.

11. Think about the future

This was a HUGE part of making morning basket a success in our family. Well, at least what we would call a success. 🙂 I frequently have to remind myself that I am making deposits into a system that I will see earnings from much later.

Our morning basket time will grow and change, as our children grow and change. But our established basic routine and time will hopefully remain, as a skeleton for which we build the future on.

When thinking about what elements of your basket routine you hope will carry into the future, consider what your values and hopes for your homeschool are. For our family, we want this to be a common time to learn, dig into our theme, develop curiosity, and practice our faith together. These are the things I hope will continue to carry over into the years to come. What matters for your future routine?

Morning basket routines look different for every family. As you cultivate your own homeschooling philosophy and approach with your littles, your morning basket routine will change and grow too.