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December is here! We have dropped our usual morning basket time plans in favor of an advent or Christmas-themed basket.
You will see the same components that make up our usual basket time, I’ve just changed out the resources. What is different is that we will do it on the weekends in December. We will drop the alphabet loop on the weekends, but we will do as much of the rest as possible. There are two reasons for this: 1) to give Josh a chance to participate with us 2) Our Bible reading is part of a Jesse Tree outline that has a reading and ornament for each day of December.
Also, our alphabet loop will not focus on a certain letter like it usually does. This is because we won’t be doing our letter-of-the-week activities during the month of December. Rather we will be reading Christmas books and doing Advent and Christmas related activities. So the alphabet loop will serve the purpose of reviewing previously learned letters.
December Morning Time Plan
So what’s in our December morning time? Here’s a basic outline. (This plan is for a four-year-old and his tag-along two-year-old-sister!)
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | |
| Prayer | Advent God | ||||||
| Bible | Reading selection from Faith and Fabric Jesse Tree | ||||||
| Christmas Hymns | Hark the Herald Angels Sing Joy to the World Away in a Manger |
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| Memorization | Isaiah 9:6 Luke 2:10-11 |
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| Alphabet Review | Letter School App | ||||||
| Sticker Book Picture Search | Matching Picture Cards to Letters | Alphabet Memory Game | Alphabet Bag | Read an Alphabet Picture Book | |||
| Read Aloud | Classic Treasury Christmas Stories | ||||||
| Fun | Richard Scarry’s Best Christmas Book Ever! | ||||||
| Music Appreciation | The Nutcracker | ||||||
Resources
Prayer Our prayer comes from faithandworship.com. There are many there to choose from!
Bible The plans from Faith and Fabric Jesse tree provide a scripture reading for each day of the month leading to Christmas Day. If you don’t have a Jesse tree in your home, it’s a great tradition! We use The Jesus Storybook Bible for these readings.
Christmas Hymns My aunt made the cute fabric Christmas Carol Hymnal that’s pictured, but I’m also waiting on Tomie dePaola’s Book of Christmas Carol’s to arrive from Paperbackswap! Of course you can also print off simple sheet music for free at hymnary.org/. We will sing these carols/hymns throughout our basket time (not in one chunk of singing) to break it up a bit.
Memorization I will read the verses (Isaiah 9:6 & Luke 2:10-11) aloud from our Bible and eventually pause to let Josiah fill in a word, and hopefully phrases by the end of the month.
Alphabet Review Each day Josiah will choose a previously learned letter to “write” using the Letter School App. We will rotate through other alphabet activities:
Sticker Book Picture Search Each week Josiah adds stickers to his sticker book for the letter we are studying. This month we will play a find-it game. I will give him a picture to find and he will use the beginning sound to find it on the correct page.
Matching Picture Cards to Letters I create a picture card word wall for each letter of the alphabet. I will gather the cards from two letters. Josiah will place the pictures with the letter they begin with.
Alphabet Memory Game I will lay our flashcards facedown and play a game of memory with Josiah to match lowercase and uppercase letters.
Alphabet Bag Each week I place items in a bag that begin with our target letter for Josiah to discover. There’s always a few in there that don’t begin with the target letter for him to toss out. He loves this activity. For our review month I will place items in the bag that begin with two letters we’ve learned and let him sort between them. I will try to use Christmas ornaments as much as possible for added Christmas fun!
Alphabet Picture Book We plan to read this Christmas pop-up alphabet book, M is for Manger that tells the birth of Jesus, The ABCs of Christmas, and The Biggest Story ABC book which retells the biblical narrative in one continuous story.
Read Aloud We will read one story from Classic Treasury: Christmas Stories. This is a book that I found at our local library’s book sale that contains short stories from authors such as Hans Christian Andersen and Charles Dickens among others.
Fun Josiah loves all things Richard Scarry! So when I found this book at McKay’s Used Books I knew it was coming home with us!
Music Appreciation We will listen to Maestro Classics’ recording of the Nutcracker. I don’t expect Josiah or Jessa to sit quietly and listen to it in it’s entirety, but we can do a small snippet a day while they play since this is placed at the end of our basket time. We also have a version of the Nutcracker they can use to view the illustrations.
How about you? Do you replace your normal morning time for a Christmas one? I’d love to hear about what you do!