Summer Morning Basket With Printable Checklist (2024)

"The secret to successful homeschooling is faithfulness - consistency if you rather."

-Pam Barnhill

Summer is almost here! We're wrapping up some end-of-year activities and getting excited for the longer days, warmer weather, and some homegrown fruit and veggies. Today, we're sharing our summer morning basket with you.

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Since we find it to be so helpful during the summer months, we've made a free printable checklist for you to reuse throughout the summer as needed. It has categories for you to consider when building your own morning basket and it's waiting for you at the bottom of this post or use the table of contents above.

Our family homeschools year-round, but thanks to all the hard work we put in throughout the year, we tend to take a much more casual approach over the summer. We have our unique rhythms and activities tend to ebb and flow accordingly.

What is a Morning Basket?

A morning basket, circle time, family basket, whatever floats your boat, is a way for us to gather around every morning, stretch our bodies, wake up our minds, center ourselves, and transition our thoughts to more purposeful work. It's a great way to begin our day, and it basically sets the stage for family-style learning and fun. Take it with you outdoors and you'll have plenty of inspiration when connecting with nature.

The morning basket is a term traditionally used in the Charlotte Mason homeschooling method. We are a Montessori homeschool family and use this basket as a supplement to Montessori-based homeschooling and family life activities. You'll notice that our basket contains mostly Montessori-friendly books so there's that to keep in mind.

Our basket usually contains some gross motor activities to begin, followed by our calendar activities, and then we make our way through some specific subject areas. We don't go through the whole basket each day. Our kids mostly pick and choose what they want each day after we finish up our calendar work.

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Most importantly, you will walk away with the tools and resources you need to confidently begin your own homeschooling journey.

Summer Morning Basket

Our Montessori summer morning basket is an important part of our summer routine, really showcasing its effectiveness during the hotter months when we're spending more of our time outside. Also, the last time we moved our morning basket was clutch because it carried us through that transition seamlessly while we packed and unpacked our belongings.

This morning basket contains a lot of books about arthropods (minus crustaceans). You name it and we've probably got one in a mason jar during the summer, so that's what our kids want to read and learn about. The books in this basket pair well with printable activities about arthropods as well as what you can find in nature.

Be sure to check out our shop to see more of what we're using in our homeschool.

Gross Motor Activities

• Yoga Pretzels

Yoga Pretzels is actually presented like a deck of cards and our kids love it. The illustrations are very cool, and the backside of each card provides instructions for showing the steps to attain each pose. Our kids choose which cards they want and we do the poses together until they've made their way through a portion of the deck. Our youngest is usually laughing/screaming hysterically while the two older kids work on matching their movements to the cards.

There are different categories of cards, and it's fun seeing our kids work independently and together to create some pretty creative poses. Some of the cards are games, like Simon Says, which is neat. It's a great way to burn off some energy and center our minds before concentrating on some other topics.

• Together We Swim

Here's a fun book to read while navigating exciting & sometimes scary waters!

Together We Swim's rhyming, descriptive text & colorful illustrations add levity and encouragement to new swimming experiences.

This book makes for a great read-aloud experience. Our kids love attending swim lessons at the YMCA and Together We Swim is the perfect companion book for beginning swimmers.

Practical Life - Calendar Work

• Around the Year
• Night of the Moon

We use these picture books with our calendar, which I mentioned in a previous post. Our kids start out singing the Days of the Week song, followed by the Months of the Year song, while we update our perpetual calendar. We usually follow it up with the month poem from Around the Year that matches our current month. Sometimes we skip the books, depending on the level of interest.

Around the Year is a Waldorf selection, with some fantasy and an occasional religious reference. Night of the Moon is a story about Yasmeen & her family. It's an excellent choice for learning about both Ramadan & the Lunar Cycle.

Music, Poetry, & Language

• The Bilingual Book of Rhymes, Songs, Stories, & Fingerplays
• Song School Spanish (the CD)

The bilingual book is a lot of fun. It's a thick book and it offers a lot of variety for little ones. Children who are reading will enjoy exploring this book independently.

• Santiago's Dinosaurios

It's Santiago's first day of school in the U.S. and, of course, a shared love of dinosaurs turns out to be the key ingredient to connection. This bilingual picture book makes for the perfect summer reading selection or for your back to school booklist.

Character Development

• The Children's Book of Virtues
• Grace and Courtesy Work

The Children's Book of Virtues is one of our character development resources. It's a great selection to incorporate into Montessori's Peace curriculum or other educational philosophies, as well as religious and secular learning environments. It pairs well withThe Moral Compassby the same author.

The Grace and Courtesy Question Game and Following Multi-Step Directions activity are excellent choices for morning basket work. They also promote movement. There are several activities in this printable pack by Trillium Montessori. They also happen to be excellent for preschool nature and ecology studies.

Science and Nature

• Cabinet of Curiosities: Collecting and Understanding the Wonders of the Natural World
• Farm Anatomy
• Curious Kids Nature Guide: Explore the Amazing Outdoors of the Pacific Northwest
• The Big Book of Bugs
• Bees: A Honeyed History
• Caterpillars, Bugs, and Butterflies
• A Beetle Is Shy
• A Butterfly is Patient
• The Best Book of Bugs

These books are all excellent choices for a unit study on arthropods. Like I mentioned, we get our hands-on activities out in nature for this, but we supplement with art and books. Printables are another great extension to this type of work.

• Food for the Future: Sustainable Farms Around the World

Tour eco-farms around the world, including a honey farm in Yemen. Continue the learning with delightful illustrations and in-depth discussion of each farm at the back of the book.

Nature Games and Activities

• Sibley's Backyard Birds Matching Game
• Play the Forest School Way

The illustrations on these bird cards are gorgeous and the colored backgrounds make them easy to self-correct. The cards are nice and thick, so they can stand up to all our kids manipulating them. Kids can start out with a subset of the species and work their way up to all 20 pairs when playing. It's marketed for ages 4+ but we found it to be enjoyable for all ages. Our kids can identify a lot bird species because of this game. Tons of fun!

Play the Forest School Way is filled with games and crafts for ages 3 and up. Learn survival skills, play with mud, and get creative in nature with these easy-to-follow activities.

Looking for a free matching activity? How about shell matching?

Conclusion for Summer Morning Basket

We hope you enjoyed seeing our summer morning basket. You can mix and match the books and activities to create your own morning basket for the summer season when kids are spending much of their time exploring outdoors.

Free Printable Checklist for Your Summer Morning Basket

Use our resources or build your own basket with this free printable checklist. You can reuse this list throughout the season as your child's interests grow and change. It will help you ensure that you're filling your basket with a nice variety of activities for kids. There's even room to add your own categories that will suit your family's preferences.

More Seasonal Activities

• Planning Your Homeschool Year
• Daily Rhythm
• Bookshelf Ideas
• Halloween Jacko-Cheese
• Bucket List for Winter