Morning Basket: Ages 2 & 4

Written by Julia in Homeschooling

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Get ideas for resources to use during morning basket time with your preschoolers.

This is our second year to do basket time. Last year it was our favorite part of the day and I’m sure this year will be no different.

We have already started back with an abbreviated basket time to get back into the habit and we will soon be doing the complete basket when Josiah turns four and we officially start a new year of preschool.

This is our morning basket time plan for a 2 and 4-year-old.

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Prayer	Pick a prayer from Prayers for Children or Poems and Prayers for the Very Young
Hymn	Songs of Faith and Praise
Bible	Read Big Truths for Little Kids	practice catechism questions
	Read the next Bible story.
Memorization	Songs for Saplings ABC: Read verse from Bible Songs for Saplings ABC: Listen and sing song
Recitation	The Original Volland Edition of Mother Goose
Character, Fun, and Other	Big Thoughts for Little People	Richard Scarry’s Busy Busy World	God’s Big World	Have Fun with Nature	make-up day
Alphabet	Have Fun Teaching Song Alphabet Chart
	The Amazing Action Alphabet	Letter School App	Letter School App	Letter School App	Read an ABC Picture Book/ make-up day
		Little Golden Picture Dictionary	Sticker Activity Book	Letter Bag
Read Aloud
Math	Preschool Math at Home

Get ideas for resources to use during morning basket time with your preschoolers.

Prayer

Currently we are just reciting a prayer from Prayers for Children or Poems and Prayers for the Very Young, rotating through the ones we learned last year. Eventually I would like to add a prayer time where we pray together including praise, thanks, request for others, confession, and request for self. When I begin this I plan to use a binder with visual reminders and add only one section at a time.

Hymn

We are currently singing “Nobody Fills My Heart Like Jesus.” We will take it a verse at a time until we have learned it. Then we will move on to a new song.

Bible

We won’t always read the story from Big Truths for Little Kids on Monday. It will fall when Josiah has mastered the previous list of catechism questions, whatever day that may be.

Currently we are finishing up The Early Reader’s Bible, but when we finish we will move onto The Big Picture Story Bible, and then The Child’s Story Bible.

Memorization

For scripture memorization this year we are using Songs for Saplings: ABC. We will read the scripture from the Bible and then sing the song. There are 26 scriptures/songs, one for each letter of the alphabet so we will do the one that correlates with our letter of the week.

Recitation

There are plenty of great Mother Goose books out there. This just happens to be one I had and it works for us. I like the historic quality of the illustrations and language found in this version. It’s almost like pre-Shakespeare for preschoolers! We also sing and recite the songs and poems from A Joy-Filled Journey Through Preschool.

Character, Fun, and Other

This is the category that Josiah favors. I planned a loop schedule, but I can already tell this is not going to work. Josiah is excited about everything in the basket that he wants to do it all- at least for this category. If he’s interested and willing, who am I to say, “No, this is only for Mondays.” So we will do what he wants and when we go through these resources quickly we will add new ones.

Alphabet

Each day we will watch and listen (and probably dance to!) the Have Fun Teaching song for our letter of the week. Then we will point to each letter on the alphabet chart and say its name, sound, and the word for the image shown. Ex: “B /b/ Ball” I made the chart pictured here, but you can find available versions all over the internet. The other activities in this section are on a loop schedule. We will only focus on the letter of the week for those resources.

The letter school app is new this year. Last year we traced tactile letter cards, but it didn’t go over well and we dropped it. I don’t think Josiah was ready to learn letter formation. He also wanted to do it his own way. I’m hoping that using an app will instruct him in correct letter formation without him trying to disagree with me on the procedure.

The letter bag is a bag that I fill ahead of time with items that begin with our letter of the week. It’s possible Josiah will be able to go on a hunt around the house for these items, so we may try that too.

Read Aloud

We just finished the first book in the Catwings series and plan to continue the series. We also read our read-aloud from A Joy-Filled Journey Through Preschool at this time.

Math

Math is at the end because it may be necessary to move to a table to work with manipulatives. We will also come to the table to do a page from Wipe Clean: Tracing and Pen Control and My First Book of Cutting. I plan to have Josiah repeat the same page from Tracing and Pen Control until he masters it. I have already separated the pages from the binding so that he’s not tempted to move ahead.

Other Resources

When we complete a resource from above I will replace it with a new one. These are a few I have ready:

Possible Read Alouds

This plan is geared toward my four year old. The toddler will participate when she can. She loves singing and books, so I anticipate her staying pretty engaged. We move quickly through each item, so this also helps with her attention span.

Our basket time is the bulk of our formal “instruction” for preschool. The rest of our school time is filled with fine and gross motor activities, sensory play, dramatic play, art, and nature study from A Joy-Filled Journey Through Preschool.

Do you do basket time? What’s your favorite resource? Please tell me all about it in the comments!