I’m a little behind on sharing our morning basket for February but, better late than never, right? This is a short month for us, since I scheduled a week long break during this month, which means the morning basket does not have quite as many activities in it. Nevertheless, we’ve been keeping quite busy and loving the new materials.
The past few months I was inspired by my own personal struggles and decided to incorporate things I am currently learning into the kids schooling. I kept thinking to myself, “If I only knew that my body was sending me signals of distress and how to handle them sooner!” After much research I purchased an activity unit study about stress response that was designed for kids. I can’t recommend it enough, it is presented incredibly well. If only all people had this type of training as children, I can only imagine how much better the world would be, I know I wish I had! Check it out here. I spread the activities and reading out over a week but it could easily be used longer than that. For example, the posters I kept 8 1/2 by 11, laminated them, and have been reviewing them with the kids, as well as a belly breathing chart I made for the kids (and me!) to practice with. A and C took to it more than I thought they would and showed me how in tune with themselves they are.
We have been still using our art cards as inspiration for art discussion and drawing. The kids don’t seem to be tired of them and sketching is a nice way for them to keep busy while I read aloud. However, I’ve got my eye on some new ones, stay tuned.
We are listening to our gospel cd over again, and I am still really glad it’s part of the morning basket. It’s a great morning matcha companion for those of us that aren’t inclined to hit the ground running. The kids can listen while I stare off into the fire zoning out plan our day- school starts before I even change out of my pjs! Just kidding, I wear my pjs like all day.
The states and capitols have just about been mastered! I’m proud of the bigs!
My mom got us this gorgeous Panagia book. The illustrations of icons are so beautiful, the kids and I are loving looking at a page at a time and reading it together. Our trusty old poems book is still going strong. A has almost finished The Village Blacksmith and C has tackled about half of The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere! They’ve each memorized about 6-8 poems since August.
This is an ugly but effective way to contain alllll our math flash cards. C is working through all the multiplication and division facts 1-12 and A is working on all the addition and subtraction facts for second grade. Hopefully, all of these will be memorized by next year.
I’ve added more games to our morning basket, just to start the day off on the right foot. Admittedly, it is difficult for me to make myself get to them every morning, but I am always so glad that I did. We alternate between memory and slapjack these days, both of which are so fun and provide good chances for sportsmanship practice. I’m not sure if IKEA still carries these memory cards, but if they do you should get them. They have really pretty pictures and are very sturdy.
Of course it would not be a good February morning basket without Valentines! I had this big elaborate plan to have Valentines made from scratch with doilies and glitter but…it was expensive and frankly, I got bogged down with other things. SO, Amazon to the rescue (like always) and we had some simple Valentines but got some great stickers to send out with them so I don’t think the kids felt too neglected. We did end up making a few homemade ones with the extra stickers which even C enjoyed despite not enjoying art very much.
I thought I’d give you a little sneak peak into Pickle’s school time basket. As with all toddlers, things have to mixed up quite often so I ended up getting a few new items for her basket.
Pardon the terrible photo, the natural light didn’t want to come out at all. The gray busy board is from my in laws and I just love it! It is a fantastic fine motor skills activity. The blue board is a wipe on wipe off board from ages ago that Pickle really likes to use over, and over, and over! I made those animal imitation cards for C out of 3×5 cards and masking tape and a sad little pipe cleaner, haha! What can I say, things were tight. I am proud of how well it is holding up though! P acts out the cards for Recitation. The Around the Farm book and little reader books are starting to grow on her. The Water Wow is just always such a winner as is the sticker book. She prefers to do those with people rather than on her own though. The dice in the middle was a gift from my friend years ago. It has a pocket with color coordinated cards that utilize fine motor and gross motor skills. Toddlers roll the dice then pick a card and act it out. It is a big hit with P! The little jar is full of leaping frogs that she is enjoying figuring out.
Well, I hope that you enjoyed this little peak into our mornings! I’m always looking for suggestions on school materials for our morning basket and things to keep a toddler busy, so let know if you have any ideas! I’m off to prep for freezer meals this weekend. I am doing some of our favorites this time, plus a new sweet potato shepherds pie recipe I’m really excited about, I’ll let you know how it goes.
Have a great weekend friends, cheers!