Our 2024-2025 Middle School Morning Basket | Middle School Morning Time

[Music] hey everybody Welcome to the wock way I'm Jessica today's video is going to be all about our morning basket for the seventh grade home school year if you missed it and you're curious I did actually share our seventh grade homeschool choices last week so I will link that up here for you guys in case you want to see what we're going to be doing in addition to our morning basket first I would like to say if if you have younger kids this is probably not what your morning time is going to look like when Emily was younger we did themed baskets and they worked so so well for elementary school years like they were my favorite we changed them out monthly because her attention span was a little bit shorter um so if you have younger kids if you're looking for something for maybe that or themed I will leave some links in the description and I will link our past baskets up here now last year as we came into Middle School I tried something different I set up a basket that was things that would like to see us do that I felt like either kind of fell through the cracks or we weren't getting done elsewhere or we just like enriching things um and that we would chip away all year long so our basket stayed the same the entire year it was the first time that's ever happened um and it worked really really well especially now that Emily's older her attention span is a little bit longer um and because we don't have as much time for our morning time so when we were um doing theme baskets and I was young typically we would spend about 45 minutes maybe an hour during morning time now we spend closer to 15 to 20 minutes um we just needed it abbreviate it a little so I wanted to like be able to hit a lot of things and then have like a big bang for their buck that we were getting a lot done and a little bit of time so with that being said this is what I'm going to include this year the first couple of things that I have are things that we will do um every day and then I have some things that will kind of like rotate through and probably do about once a week so the first thing that I have that we will be doing every day are these growth mindset affirmation cards um I think it's a deck of 52 I plan to keep the same one for an entire week so like this one is a strive for Progress not Perfection what I like about these though is there's questions on the back that have to do with that affirmation so this one for example is what are three things I did this week that will bring me closer to where I want to be in 5 years what are three ways I've changed since this time last year and do I ever struggle with perfectionism how do I overcome this if you missed um the curriculum video you wouldn't have heard me say that this year kind of the thing that I really want to focus on is connection and um conversations and having those meaningful moments with Emily and I thought this would be a really great way to do that because we could do the affirmations together and then we could both kind of answer our version of the questions which I mean this is going to be just as good for me as it is for her um let's see I am proud of myself for being a hard worker the questions on the back are what's something I've worked really hard to achieve this week how did this make me feel what helps me stay motivated to work hard what are the daily habits that keep me on track do I ever procrastinate or avoid doing something because I know it will require a lot of hard work and what can I do to overcome this like I just feel like those are going to be some really amazing conversations that we're going to be having so I was excited about that um the other thing that I have that we will do every day just for that big bang for our buck is the Smart cards for 7th grade I don't know if we'll do a whole card or if we'll just do a single question we will kind of see how that rolls out but I like that it means that we're going to be getting a lot of different subjects we can you know kind of jump in and out it'll give me the ability to see what she's interested in what she's not interested in we may end up following rabbit Trails based off of what the questions are that day um so this is something I'm really excited about having in there um let's see the other thing that we will be doing every day is this um my year around the world last year we did the nature one um this year we're going to do the around the world one it's just like quick little Global activities most of them are drawing coloring or doing a quick little writing um she can typically do this while I'm reading from whatever I'm going to be reading from that day so it's not like it's taking up more time cuz we're kind of double dying at the time um let's see another quick one that we will do every day is this day in history for kids it's a thousand and one remarkable moments and fascinating facts each day has like three or four different things um so we'll be traveling through time day by day we did a similar book to this last year and really enjoyed it so I thought it would be fun to add another one this year and see what else may have happened through history um and then I'm still unsure about whether this is going to go in our morning time or not um and I said that in the curriculum video and it's our Discovery decks these will be happening during the year no matter what I'm just not sure where they're fitting into our routine yet last year we did them or Emily watched the videos while she ate breakfast this year I was thinking it would be fun to watch the videos together and so then we could discuss them and see if it led down any rabbit Trails which is one of my favorite parts of homeschooling um I'm just not sure yet I with us wanting to keep it shorter um I don't know if adding a video is a great thing most of them are under 10 all of them are under 10 minutes most are even under five so it could work um and that's where we're going to try it and we'll see I'll let you guys know where they end up at but the discovery decks would make a great addition to morning basket or morning time if you have the extra 5 to 10 minutes because there's so many different topics and they lend themselves to Rabbit trails and so that's where I would like them but like I said we'll see and then I have three other things that um I'm not sure there's quite enough to do every day for a year so I think I'm actually going to just like Loop through them um one is the almanac for kids Emily got this for Christmas um it's the 2024 version we will probably just read like a spread at a time um I love that there's so many different topics from um exploration to uh culture to Science and Technology Wonders of Nature history geography so it would give us a really good kind of again way to touch on a bunch of different topics go down rabbit Trails see what interests Emily um and that it's current because it's 2024 and then I thought about if we did get through this by the end of the year here as in December um I could always pick up the 2025 version to keep going so right now I'm thinking I'm going to Loop through but that is one that could potentially become every day um let's see for art these spot the differences books have come in and out of our life 100 times I thought they would be really fun to bring back we have four of them um basically it gives you a famous masterpiece and this is the correct one this is one that's different and you have to study them to figure out what's different down in the corner or down on the bottom it shows you um how many like you could check it if you wanted but how many different um changes there are and what I also love about it is that it tells you about like there's little synopsises little fact um tidbits all around that tell you about it and you're literally having to study the artwork to find the differences so it's just kind of a fun easy way um to get in some art study without it being like cumbersome I guess so this is what we're going to do there's 25 in each book so between all four we have 100 different masterpieces like I said I'm going to Loop through these though instead of doing them every day because Emily almost always wants to do more than one like typically she wants to do at least two so if I Loop and do it like every 2 to 3 days it means they'll probably last us the whole year and then the same thing with this these word teasers these are SAT vocabulary cards I'm not sure how many is in here but I don't think it's enough for the whole year I think it's probably only about 100 so same thing um maybe a little more but this is what one looks like so on the front it has a question about that word so for example is it disingenuous to invite someone you don't like to a party why or why not and then on the back it has the vocabulary word the pronunciation um the definition and then other related words to it so just thought it would be a fun way to expose her to maybe some SAT vocabulary words and then again we would have that discussion those conversations maybe a rabbit Trail because there's a question associated with it um and then the last thing during our morning time which by the way doesn't even happen in the morning anymore but I will explain that in a minute is um read alouds this year last year for read alouds most of what I did was life skills did a lot of Health um life skills for twin money um Middle School Success that kind of thing this year I wanted to work on uh personal development um mindset that kind of thing so I chose books that that would kind of work with that um one is winning the war in your mind for teens change your thinking change your life raising a screen smart kid um this is embracing the good and avoiding the bad in the digital age how to influence people in when friends um what I really really liked about this one is it is an essential guide for a new generation of empowered Savvy and confident young women eat that frog she saw this book and she's like I'm not eating any frogs it actually made me laugh um 21 ways to stop procrastination and get more done in less time just as you are uh a teen's guide to self-acceptance and Lasting self-esteem it says find your inner confidence and discover what really matters to you and then the last one is seven highly effective habits of teens um the international best seller and it's the ultimate Teenage success guide it's basically like a road map um step-by-step guide to help get you from where you are now to where you want to be in your future um I have not read any of these I read enough reviews to know that I wanted to read these and I'm actually excited for some of them because I think much like the growth mindset um affirmation cards they will be just as good for me as they will be for her I am pretty sure that even though she does not want to eat said frog that this is um the one we're going to start with because I think both of us need it the most so I think that's where we're going to start but my goal is to get through um six of them which is what I chose because I felt like that gave us you know a like a month and a half to two months for each one and if it went longer that was okay but I was hoping that that gave us enough time to get through them at a slow enough rate that we were digesting the information and we could you know stop and talk about it and really put it into practice versus just reading through them um that is what is going to be in our our morning basket now let's talk about our morning basket it does not happen in the morning anymore um it typically happens during lunchtime now because that is what works um our whole kind of routine of our day has shifted we do still call it morning basket because we spent so many years calling it that um I've heard a ton of people call it different things they just call it basket time um somebody told me the other day they call it couch time CU that's where they do it another person told me they call it 11 Z's um and they just have like you know tea and snacks when they do it all of those are fantastic ideas lunch is just what works um I have always found the best way to do our morning time is when Emily's hands are busy even when she was little I had like a slew of things that would keep her busy while we were reading aloud food now that she's a tween is the best one um there is never any griping about that so I make her lunch we sit down either at the table or on the couch um and she eats I start our morning time and when she's done eating normally she will just grab um whatever her like year Journal is and she will work her way through that while I finish up because typically she's eating at least last year the way it worked out it's like while I was doing all of like this type of stuff you know she was eating snacking whatever and then about the time she she was kind of done eating we were done with that so she could grab this and be working working on this as I was reading aloud from what was last year our life skills what this year is going to be our personal development so I'm hoping that that will still work this year like it did last year um if you are interested in seeing our morning Basket in action I don't think I did one of those last year because it seemed kind of boring and monotonous as far as video goes like it's not nearly as fun looking as it was when she was younger that doesn't mean it's not fun for us um but if you're interested in seeing what it looks like and in real time let me know down in the comments and that is a video I will add to my schedule for you guys [Music]