This post is part of the What’s Working Right Now series, a series that attempts to give quick, practical tips for real-life homeschooling problems that can be adapted to fit in wherever it will make life easier. 

The Problem: Mornings are hard. I know they’re hard for everyone (okay, not EVERYONE. We all know at least one morning person, but they’re mostly mythical.)

In my house, mornings are hard for several reasons. 

First, our mornings are not on a consistent routine because I work outside the home two days a week. On those days, my kids have to get up super early to get ready for the babysitter’s house. Second, my daughter is NOT a morning person. Third, my son IS a morning person.

I have a tendency to let all of those realities close in on me at once. I keep telling myself I’ll just let my daughter lazily lounge in a heap of blankets over the heat vent a little while longer. I’ll get some chores done with a toddler “helping” at my feet. Before I know it, we’ve shot through half the day, and now it’s time to wrestle the toddler into a nap.

I feel like I’ve lost it all.

The Solution: Morning baskets. Okay, okay. Much like the loop schedule I posted about before, this is not new or earth-shattering. Many homeschooling families use morning baskets, and there are tons of great resources out there about how to do them well.

Many of the morning baskets I found, though, are about reading scripture and setting a religious purpose for the day. I can completely see how a morning religious ritual is valuable to those who practice it, but it means that a lot of the advice for morning baskets doesn’t apply much to our secular homeschool practices.

Our particular morning basket situation has to address the following conditions:

• Mixed-Age Appeal– I’ve got a precocious 8-year-old and a rambunctious 2-year-old, and whatever is in the morning basket needs to keep them both engaged and interested.
• Not too “Schooly”- I wanted to start our mornings off with school that didn’t feel like school, so the morning baskets need to be fun while still serving a purpose.
• Easy to Set Up-This is a key place where I differ from many of the morning baskets I read about on other blogs. There are some incredibly involved, detailed, and beautiful morning baskets out there. Mine needs to be able to be prepped and ready to go in 15-20 minutes the night before.

What I ended up with is a simple wire basket on the dining room table. The kids have morning routine checklists to keep them on task, and on the days when we’re going to be home together, that list ends with “Check Morning Basket.”

So far, this approach has worked incredibly well. They’ve both been engaged and had fun looking through related but age-differentiated activities, and in multiple instances, they’ve spent more than an hour expanding on the ideas and following research or art rabbit holes.

It has been a great way to ease into the day for all of us, and it makes the rest of the day feel more productive and focused, too.

Do you use morning baskets? If so, let us know what kind of things you put in them in the comments.