How to create a homeschool morning time routine

Morning time floats around the homeschool world with words like morning basket or couch subjects. In short, this is the portion of the homeschool day where you can teach multiple subjects and topics to all different ages. This is a great way to enjoy family time while also simplifying your homeschool schedule!

While it’s called morning time, it doesn’t have to necessarily be done in the morning. Just connect it to any of your normal events that happen everyday, like lunch, for example. Some families may find it easier to include this routine in the middle of the day when you’re all gathered for lunch.

It really doesn’t matter when you do it, but including some dedicated family-style subjects during your day at some point is the key.

What do you do during morning time?

Morning time provides a great way to teach almost every subject together with a ride range of ages, especially from K-8. We’ll cover specific ideas for teen morning time below in our conversation with Gena Mayo, creator of Morning Time Teens.

But especially if you have several children within the K-8 range, you can do almost every subject together except those skill-level specific content areas like math and language arts.

Consider doing your history and science readings, nature study, art, music appreciation and composer study, Bible, foreign language, memorization, poetry, and literature read-aloud.

The clear benefit, aside from being together as a family, is that in just an hour or two together, you can cover almost everything that needs done in your day. Then, your kids can head to the table for the individual subjects while you help them as needed.

Morning Basket Ideas

While you don’t have to use a basket at all, it does help to corral lots of resources and materials and keep them in one place until you need them.

Here are just a few ideas for what you could include in your morning basket:

songs
poems
flashcards
timeline review
history read-aloud
science living book
nature journals
current events activity
Bible study
prayer journal
notebooking materials
biography
audiobook
character study
calendar and weather time (if you have really young kids)
picture books
seasonal items (like an Advent study)

Why a Morning Basket Works – listen to episode 40

Do you need your homeschool day to start off better? Are you struggling to get everyone motivated in the morning? Maybe you should try a morning basket!

The Benefits of a Morning Basket

There are almost no negatives to a morning basket! But the benefits are enormous. If you’re overwhelmed with your current homeschool plan, then adding in a morning basket routine will help to simplify your day and increase productivity.

Gets the whole family started off together
Lets you include multiple subjects that might normally be forgotten
Works really well to teach multiple ages together
Informal structure
Can change it out – it doesn’t have to stay the same all year

What We’ve Used in Our Morning Basket

The contents of our morning basket have changed from year to year, but here are a few specific resources we used.

A Peek Inside Our Bible Memory Box
How to Include a Foreign Language In Your Homeschool – Even If You Aren’t Fluent!
Checklist – How to Teach Your Kids a Language, Even If You’re Not Fluent
FREE video series – How to Teach Your Kids a Second Language at Home
FREE 7-day trial of the Cultured Home Language Program
Classical Conversations Timeline Cards
Classical Conversations Science Cards
The Story of the Orchestra

Music in Our Homeschool online music courses

How to use Morning Time Teens – listen to episode 173

What about your teens? Can a morning time work for them too? Gena Mayo thinks so! She’s the veteran homeschool mom behind I Choose Joy and Music in Our Homeschool. And now she’s launching her new Morning Time Teen plan for homeschool families to use with their older kids.

Listen in on episode 173 of the Homeschool with Moxie Podcast as we learn about how Gena uses morning time, how it’s looked through the years, and what’s included in her new Morning Time Teens.

See what’s included in Morning Time Teens: A Year with Lewis and Tolkien – Gena says you can use this for a literature credit on your high schooler’s transcript! But there’s a lot of flexibility with this plan if you don’t want to use all of the ideas.

Take a look at the first two weeks of Morning Time Teens: A Year with Lewis and Tolkien

Enroll in Morning Time Teens: A Year with Lewis and Tolkien