Gently start your homeschooling day with a preschool morning basket.
Your littles will be so excited that you let them do activities without your help!
This article may contain affiliate links to products that may help you when homeschooling preschool.
Why Make a Preschool Morning Basket
Morning basket time allows your family to come together and begin school.
This doesn’t mean that everyone is doing the same thing, though.
You decide what goes into the morning basket and what the purpose of your family’s morning basket will be.
Everyone can gather around the basket, choose an activity, and work on it in peace (hopefully).
It gets your little ones’ brains thinking and keeps their hands busy.
Your littles will be given choice and independence when it comes to the activities in the morning basket.
Both choice and independence are crucial skills that your littles need to have practice doing so they are comfortable and able to work independently.
Hopefully, this will lead to you being able to cook breakfast without someone pulling on your leg.
Activities you have previously printed and taught your little ones how to complete can be added to the basket and reused.
This way you get more use out of the activity and your little ones get more practice at the skill the activity is addressing.
How to Make a Preschool Morning Basket
Choose a Basket
Your basket doesn’t have to be fancy.
It doesn’t have to be a basket at all.
Old diaper boxes, reusable shopping bags, and totes all work well as morning baskets.
You are looking for something that is sturdy and that your littles can easily get access to.
If you are looking for a basket, ask around.
Many people have them stored in their basements and would love for the basket to be used again.
Second-hand stores also have an abundance of them!
Decide How You Want to Use your Preschool Morning Basket
Some people use the preschool morning basket as a place to store new learning activities.
Some use it as a place to put their themed books and items.
Others use their morning basket as a time to revisit old activities that have previously been taught how to use.
Choose What to Include
The sky is the limit when it comes to preschool morning basket ideas.
You, ideally, would want your littles to know how to use the items in the morning basket independently.
Some preschool morning basket ideas are:
- books
- paper and coloring tools
- puzzles
- activities previously taught
- counting games
- blocks
- letter tiles with a sheet to match the tiles on
- stickers and paper
After you have used the preschool morning basket for a bit, have your little ones think of preschool morning basket ideas.
They will be the ones using it and they may have thought of some activities to add that you had not thought of.
This also gives them ownership over the basket, which they will love!
Determine How Often You Want to Rotate the Items
Do you want to rotate weekly?
Monthly?
By theme or unit?
Maybe you don’t want to set a schedule but go based on if your littles are bored with what is in the basket.
That works, too!
Keeping items fresh and new will help your littles to be excited to do the morning basket.
But if you change what it inside your morning basket too much it is easy to get burnt out when it comes to ideas of what to put in it.
Putting Your Preschool Morning Basket Together
Once you have collected your items, set them inside your basket.
You will want to go over with your littles how to use the morning basket.
Clear up if they are allowed to use it all day or only during morning basket time.
How do you expect them to pick up?
Can they do more than one activity during morning basket time?
Littles will meet your expectations as long as you lay out your expectations for them.
Preschool Morning Basket Ideas
Make your Preschool Morning Basket fit your family’s needs.
There are many different morning basket ideas but the best ones are the ideas that work for your family.