How to Make a Morning Menu…It’s Easier Than You Think!
If you’re new to homeschooling, you may be wondering what a morning menu even is. I remember not having a clue what it was when I first jumped in to the homeschool community! It didn’t take too long to figure out, though.
In fact, the morning menu went hand in hand with something I was already familiar with as a previous classroom teacher….circle time! I always started our day in kindergarten with circle time. It was when we all got together, read through a morning message I had written for the class, reviewed simple reading and writing skills, practiced calendar skills, sang a couple songs and acknowledged birthdays or special events of the day.
Now apply that principle to homeschooling and you’ll hear the terms morning time, morning meeting, & morning basket all interchanged. However it’s the same concept as circle time.
This is simply a special time where you gather together as a family to read, connect, and focus on the subjects you can do family-style. While it doesn’t have to be done in the morning, it is often the time of day chosen because it can be done as everyone is waking up and eating breakfast.
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What Do I Put in my morning basket?
What is taught, discussed, and learned varies greatly from one family to the next. For example, families with a Charlotte Mason focus will incorporate items from her philosophy during this time. However, here are some common choices:
- Bible
- Catechism – we use the Truth and Grace Memory Books
- Hymn – Then Sings My Soul is great for the stories behind the songs.
- Folksong
- Poetry
- Read-Alouds
- Copywork
- Mad-Libs
- Seasonal Books & Activities
- Nature Study
- Art Study – Simply Charlotte Mason is a great resource for this!
- Composer Study
- Calendar Skills
- Book of Centuries
- Any family-style subject (we do history this way right now!)
- I also rotate out seasonal coloring pages for anyone who wants to use them while I’m reading. š
Here’s a look at what our morning basket schedule will look like this year:
So. Where do morning menu’s come in then? That is why you’re here after all. š
The morning menu is simply a convenient way to get the important pages you want your children to use or work on during this time in one place!
In our morning menus this year, you will find:
- Hymn Lyrics
- Folk Song Lyrics
- A poem for memorization and/or recitation
- A calendar of the current month
- Other calendar skills pages that can be reused every day with dry erase markers (we like this style!)… depending on the age and need of each child.
- List of the Books of the Bible (we are working on learning them)
- And usually something else I change up periodically…it’s such a flexible tool!
How do I actually make a morning menu?
Step 1: Buy a Menu for Each Child
These are the ones we use. I like them because they hold a regular 8.5 x 11 piece of paper or cardstock and can provide views of up to 8 pages! If you don’t want to purchase menus though, the “morning menu” can also be done with a three ring binder and page protectors, a three-prong folder, or anything at all that you can get creative with. š
I DO suggest using them in such a way that dry erase markers can be used, though! That allows for re-use day after day.
Step 2: Decide What You Want to Go In the Menus
Do you want print outs of the lyrics to the songs you’re learning?
Maybe you want copywork pages of a Bible verse or favorite seasonal quote.
Are you wanting your kids to sharpen their calendar skills by doing a daily calendar page?
Is it going to hold coloring pages to use during read-alouds?
Basically just think about how you want this morning menu to house the activities you want them to look at or use during your morning time.
Step 3: Print Out Anything You Plan on Putting In Your Children’s Menus
Here are the resources I’ve personally created for this:
- Morning Menu Covers: I make these myself!
- Hymn Choice and Lyrics: I just follow the free monthly schedule provided on Ambleside Online.
- Folk Song Choice and Lyrics: Same as above…Ambleside Online
I already typed out the Ambleside Online schedule for the 2022-2023 school year for my own kids and I want to offer them to you as well…totally free! I love to help other homeschooling mamas save time where I can. š
This download has a hymn and folk song for September through May of this year…one copy seasonally themed that goes along with my Seasonal Morning Menu Covers above and one just black and white for anyone not wanting to use extra ink. There are 51 total pages!
- Poem Choice and Lyrics: There are tons of great resources!
- Look through your language arts curriculum (this is what we are doing this year)
- Start with Mother Goose nursery rhymes if you have young ones
- Check out poems by Christina Rossetti and A.A. Milne
- Ambleside Online gives great recommendations for poetry as well!
- Calendar Pages: This is something else I make myself. It’s something I enjoy doing. š If you know your way around Powerpoint or Canva then you can try it for yourself! If not, there are options out there on Pinterest and Etsy. These are the ones I created and am using this year:
- Copywork
- Bible verse
- name, address, and phone number
- days of the week and months of the year
- letters and numbers
- anything for memorization such as Bible passages or The Pledge of Allegiance
- seasonal quotes from favorite books
There are tons of great resources!
Step 4: Fill Your Menus and Enjoy Using Them!
What I love about using Morning Menus in our Homeschool:
When I first heard about homeschooling families using actual restaurant menus during their morning time, I just remember thinking how clever that was! Then we attended a Charlotte Mason based co-op last school year that was also using these menus to hold the lyrics to the songs they would be learning and poems they would be practicing.
Since I bought a pack for that that came with more than the 3 I needed, I decided to go ahead and use them in our morning time as well…and I was hooked.
I love how these menus allow for daily re-use with a dry erase marker. This comes in handy with writing the date every day on a calendar page or doing copywork.
I also love how customizable and fluid they can be. The covers can be changed out seasonally or just whenever you want to look at something different. š Poems and songs can be changed out however often you would like. Your young children can practice copying and writing their name and birthday. As long as the paper is the right size, your options are endless, really!
Here are some more of the morning menu designs I’ve created:
I do hope that this explained well how to make and use a morning menu or morning time binder in your homeschool. Maybe you even feel encouraged enough to give it a try! Either way, I hope you have a wonderful school year with your children. š
Would you mind leaving a few examples of your other pages? Iām interested in how you do the Bible and the memorization items. How do you make this group work? Seems like it could be more of a busy work type thing so you can get things done :).
Hello! I have our morning menus laid out on the table every morning so when the kids get up they make their breakfast and eat while working on their menus or work on them while I’m making breakfast. Not all of my kids have the exact same items in their menu. For example, my youngest 2 are still working on the calendar skills while my oldest only has a calendar to mark off the date but not working on days, months, name, address, etc.
Any Bible copywork or poems for memorization in there for the month they can practice during that time and we try to have a poetry tea time once every month or so where they can recite what they’ve memorized. Not necessary but fun. š
Any other Bible and subject we do together as part of our morning basket begins after morning menus. They don’t spend a lot of time doing them…it just provides a way to ease them into the day and practice some skill sets daily in a short amount of time.
Morning menus aren’t necessary by any means but we have enjoyed using them so far and I find them useful for our family! Hope that helps. š
After doing the Morning Menu do the kids have energy to do the other school things like Language Arts, Math etc…
How do you go about it?
Yes! They are only working on morning menu pages for 10 minutes or so most mornings. Then on days we go over songs or poems, we do that after and along with our morning basket time…which is when we do our family subjects. We spend an hour at most (give or take a little) doing our morning basket and then go on with our independent work. To see in more detail what our day looks like, you can check out another post I have titled “Our Fourth Year Homeschooling: My Favorite So Far!”. Hope that helps!