A morning basket is a great opportunity for kids to learn about a variety of subjects together that you might not always get to during your regular homeschool lessons. Adding art to our morning baskets has been an awesome benefit for our homeschool lessons throughout the day.
Starting our homeschool day with art has been a beautiful way to encourage creative thinking throughout the day. In fact, incorporating art into your homeschool lessons has tons of amazing benefits! Keep reading to discover how we are using art in our morning baskets to support our current homeschool lessons and unit studies.
What is a Morning Basket?
When I first heard about morning baskets, I was uncertain if I could make the method work for our family. You see, I’m not a morning person. Thankfully, morning baskets work any time of day and I’ve learned how to use a morning basket without actually being a morning person.
Since I’m not a morning person, I like to choose activities for our morning basket that don’t require me to be functioning at 100%. These are usually things my daughter enjoys and can do with relative independence. Adding video art lessons from ChalkPastel to our morning basket plans makes it easy to incorporate art activities while I’m still waking up.
Sometimes morning basket activities are called “circle time” or “morning time.” The activities that go into your morning basket are made to bring everyone together, to set the tone for your day, and (sometimes) to incorporate activities and subjects you find yourself falling behind in.
Morning baskets are ideal for incorporating art lessons into your homeschool days because they give you a chance to start the day on a creative note. Beginning your homeschool lessons with creativity gest kids excited about the day’s lessons and encourages creative thinking all day long.
Morning baskets are great for adding other subjects like poetry, books read aloud, and foreign language to your homeschool days too. We often use our morning baskets to supplement our current unit study or lesson with art projects and other fun activities.
How We Use Morning Baskets To Support Our Current Unit Study
Currently, we are learning about all things Space. My daughter, Emily, is fascinated by Outerspace so we are learning everything we can about planets, constellations, astronauts, and astronomers.
I’ve put together a Space Unit Study with lunar lore, constellations, information on all the planets, and lessons on astronauts and the Apollo Missions. We also put together a really cool themed morning basket to use with this Space unit study.
Our Space morning basket will give Emily opportunities to learn more about all the things we’ll be studying through art, games, and experiments. Some of our favorite art activities from the Space morning basket include a themed playdough kit from Playful Days Dough and Usborne’s Astronauts Sticker Book.
The Value of Adding Art To Our Morning Basket
We might not get to every activity in our morning basket each day, but throughout the month we tend to cover everything. Incorporating art in our morning basket activities has all kinds of great benefits! For starters, art encourages creativity so it’s a great way to begin the day’s lessons.
Adding art to our morning basket also helps us to start the day on a high note. Emily loves art! She’s always excited to begin the day with an art project or art activity, so art is an easy choice for our morning basket routine. Beginning the day with something she really enjoys helps start the whole day off right.
I have found that one of the best ways to add art to our morning baskets is with You ARE An Artist. Lessons are available for all subjects and interests. I can easily pull up one that matches our current unit study when needed. I also use them to help plan our morning baskets each season.
You ARE an ARTiST has lots of fun video art lessons that match up well with all kinds of interesting topics and unit studies. Here is an example of all fun options we are using for our Space unit study:
- Solar Eclipse Video Art Lessons
- Moon Missions Video Art Lessons
- Solar System Video Art Lessons
- Solar Exploration Video Art Lessons – Clubhouse Edition (Hubble Telescope and more)
- Inventors Video Art Lessons – Clubhouse Edition (Galileo telescope)
You can access all of these fun and easy video art lessons for your morning basket or homeschool unit studies with a clubhouse membership.
I’m particularly excited about exploring the Solar Exploration Video Art Lessons with Emily because they include a Hubble Lesson that is going to be super fun to do together with our mini unit study on Edwin Hubble. If you’re thinking about beginning morning baskets with your kids this year, this is a great way to get started. Pair a book with an art activity and watch the learning fun begin!
About Jessica Waldock
Jessica Waldock is a writer, photographer, and homeschool mom of one living in sunny Florida. She founded The Waldock Way as a way to give back to the homeschool community that she loves so much. At The Waldock Way Jessica shares tips, tricks, inspiration, and unique resources that help ignite a love of learning in children that will last a lifetime. She inspires families to engage in homeschooling as a lifestyle where relationships come first and interest-led learning prevails. You can connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube.