Family Basket Changed our Homeschool

We all begin our homeschool journey in a different place. I had very little experience with homeschooling when I started and bounced all over the place. Sometimes it was “Gameschooling”, field trips or worksheets. After a while we got into a good grove, but then it got BORING! Plus, there were so many great micro-topics I wanted to include.

Thankfully, a few years into my homeschool journey, I began reading books by authors like Sally Clarkson, Sarah MacKenzie, Cindy Rollins and Susan Schaeffer Macaulay. Instantly, I fell in love with the laidback, thoughtful and fruit producing style, for which these ladies all advocate. One key element to this style of learning environment is a Family Basket time.

What is a "Family Basket" or "Morning Time" ? 

In Teaching From Rest, Sarah MacKenzie says, "Small increments of time add up to years... Cultivating habits of encountering truth, beauty and goodness will not be time wasted."

Basically, what she is saying is that all the amazing things that you hope will one day be a part of your children's lives, you should begin planting seeds for now! Short times of reading about topics of interest, discussing and memorizing things together now, will be where you see fruit later. 

What should be a part of a "Family Basket"?

It is so simple! Anything that you love!  Especially, those tiny things which you always wish you could "fit" into your school time. 

For our family that meant bible verse memorization, poetry reading, prayer time, cute animal stories, Mad Libs, riddles and new vocabulary words. We never do everything, every time, but rotate some of the "extras". Here is what we do:

1 Pledge (American flag, Christian flag & Bible - rotating 1 each day)

Our Bible Verse of the week. We each take turns reciting our verse from last week and adding on the new part this week. (I reward this with chocolate chips. 😉) So far we have memorized a LOT of scripture and they are currently working on the first chapter of James! When my boys were tiny we used [these cute ABC Bible Verses] as a guide to our verses. 

Prayer - We share a minute praying for the things that are important in our world. We pray for people we know, things on the news, circumstances we are involved in and anything that will help us give thanks.

Hymn - I dug out some old hymns that I believe could serve my children well during difficult times in their futures. We normally focus on one song for a few weeks until they know it really well. Then we review them periodically. They often ask to sing these songs at bedtime - which completely melts this mama's heart! 💜

Vocabulary word of the day - Over time I decided to add a new word. We look it up in the dictionary or thesaurus and I ask them to say (for the younger) or write a sentence using the word. I only plan 4 words per week and then we review all the words on Friday. We have recently added to this and made a game of using our words of the week for extra treats. 

We also rotate and do 1 or 2 of these depending on how much time we have that day: 

Poetry - I love The Random House Book of Poetry for Children but we also found some really fun and entertaining poems online [HERE].

Short Story - Some of our family favorites have been Wisdom with the Millers, stories from Teach Your Children Well, and James Herriot's Treasury for Children.

Mad Libs - This is a great way to "do grammar" without them feeling bad. It is an easy and fun way to reinforce what nouns, verbs & adjectives are! Our family liked these.

A Riddle - My oldest son in particular loves to solve logic puzzles or riddles. This is his favorite part - so we leave it for last - like a treat at the end. Our favorite this year has been Difficult Riddles for Smart Kids.

Perhaps you are thinking, "This sounds great, but I do not know how to start."
All together this routine usually takes us 20-30 minutes unless I select a longer story. But please start simple. If morning time is new to your family or you have young children - just pick one or two things and begin making them a part of your routine. Find an anchor to attach to. Something like "Just after breakfast". Then do it for a few weeks and evaluate. Is it working? Do you need something for your tiniest people to do with their hands during this time?

Feeling overwhelmed? That’s ok! Look into Morning Virtues by the Gentle + Classical Press