Morning Basket Basics & More on Biographies

The morning basket learning idea has its foundation in the Charlotte Mason style of education. While only books on various subjects would make up a morning basket from the original intent of Charlotte Mason, you can certainly make your morning basket unique to your family’s educational interests. You can also make your morning basket an afternoon tote or an evening crate . . . or a mix of any time of day or container! For simplicity, we’ll just use the morning basket term to define a place where you combine different learning resources for family social time.

You can pack your morning basket with books, short games, flash cards on different subjects, audio devices, or musical instruments. There are many more things that can be included, but consider how anything you add to this together time basket will provide an environment of learning and appeal to your family’s learning interests.

There are so many different ways to teach and discover through a morning basket. At the end of this article, you’ll find a few links to show different ways to approach a learning basket in your home. For this article, we will focus on using biographies through your morning basket time to be inspired through the life and experiences of children and adults.

Biography Options for Your Morning Basket

Your morning basket contents should be constantly changing, and if the unit study approach to learning tends to be your style, a morning basket is just the place to focus all the materials on the topic of study. Or maybe you want to change up the contents to align with a different subject every month. Either way, biographical resources like books, audios, or worksheets can be part of your family learning time and will be an engaging part of your basket no matter what the subject focus is.

Here are two biographical books about children with related resources that you may want to consider for family reading time:

A Long Walk to Water

Description from Amazon.ca

The book begins as two stories, told in alternating sections, about two eleven-year-olds in Sudan, a girl in 2008 and a boy in 1985. The girl, Nya, is fetching water from a pond that is two hours’ walk from her home: she makes two trips to the pond every day. The boy, Salva, becomes one of the "lost boys" of Sudan, refugees who cover the African continent on foot as they search for their families and for a safe place to stay. Enduring every hardship from loneliness to attack by armed rebels to contact with killer lions and crocodiles, Salva is a survivor, and his story goes on to intersect with Nya’s in an astonishing and moving way.

Just Add Water is a documentary featuring Salva Dut, a “Lost Boy of Sudan,” now an American citizen.

A Long Walk to Water - Documentary Film Guide & Webquest: free digital download from Teachers Pay Teachers.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

Description from Amazon.ca

Now a Netflix film starring and directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor, this is a gripping memoir of survival and perseverance about the heroic young inventor who brought electricity to his Malawian village.

When a terrible drought struck William Kamkwamba's tiny village in Malawi, his family lost all of the season's crops, leaving them with nothing to eat and nothing to sell. William began to explore science books in his village library, looking for a solution. There, he came up with the idea that would change his family's life forever: he could build a windmill. Made out of scrap metal and old bicycle parts, William's windmill brought electricity to his home and helped his family pump the water they needed to farm the land.

Retold for a younger audience, this exciting memoir shows how, even in a desperate situation, one boy's brilliant idea can light up the world. Complete with photographs, illustrations, and an epilogue that will bring readers up to date on William's story, this is the perfect edition to read and share with the whole family.

Ted Talks profile of William Kamkwamba

Christian Biographies in The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine

Each issue of the quarterly magazine profiles a Torchlighters series episode about heroes of faith. These short stories are animated videos which can be found on streaming platforms such as PureFlix, Amazon Prime Video, and RightNow Media. If you’re a SchoolhouseTeachers.com member, you can view them all through the membership site and have access to additional resources on Vision Video through links on the video page like a student pack, leader’s guide, and board game. The student packs are great to have in your morning basket for screen-free time.

Recent biographies in the digital magazine:

Winter 2020-2021 - The Unwavering Faith of Harriet Tubman

Fall 2020 - Martin Luther: Transformed by God’s Word

Summer 2020 - Jim Elliot: Risking It All For Christ

Morning Basket Ideas from Others

Here are some examples of other families and how they use a morning basket in their homeschool:

This article has been written by homeschooling staff writers of The Canadian Schoolhouse (TCS). Enjoy more of our content from TCS contributors and staff writers by visiting our Front Door page that has content on our monthly theme and links to all our content sections.