Home » Favorite Morning Basket Themes for Preschool and Kindergarten
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Morning Basket themes for Preschool and Kindergarten are a blast for our family. Whether it is choosing a topic that my kiddos know nothing about or using a student led interest approach when planning morning basket lessons, themed lessons, and unit studies bring so much joy to our family.

Below are some of our favorite themes and a few of the ideas that we used with these themes to help you carry out your morning basket plans.

1. Honeybees

My littles have a curiosity around bees that gives me such joy and hope. They love to learn more about these fascinating little helpers and experiment with honey. We loved this morning basket theme SO much that we used it to support our unit study around bees. 

Here are a few of our favorite bee morning basket resources.

  1. Honey Bee Preschool Unit and Morning Basket Bundle
  2. Caitie’s Classroom BeeHive Finger Play on YouTube
  3. Kaia and The Bees by Maribeth Boelts
  4. The Beeman by Laurie Krebs
  5. Usborne Peek Inside a Bee Hive

 

Like what you see? Feel free to Pin all these ideas to your own boards for later.

2. Fairy Tales

With a daughter in Kindergarten, everything in our home is about dragons, villains, castles, and princesses. So, fairy tales as a morning basket theme felt natural and was a great way to incorporate some student-led learning.

Below are some of the resources our kiddos enjoyed so much during our fairy tale morning basket. 

  1. Fairy Tale Story Cards
  2. Various fairy tale storybooks (use your local library to find your favorites)
  3. Fairytale Preschool Center Resource by Kindergarten Rocks on TPT (not affiliated)
  4. Melissa and Doug Fairytale Reusable Stickers

 

3. Apples & Pumpkins

  • When we do apples and pumpkins, I like to split them into two weeks. But some other homeschool families I have spoken to like to do them at the same time. These are some of the books that we read for our apple and pumpkin weeks.
    1. Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper
    2. Pumpkin Hill by Elizabeth Spurr
    3. Pumpkins by Gail Gibbons
    4. Apples by Gail Gibbons
    5. Johnny Appleseed by Jane Yolen
    6. The Biggest Apple Ever by Steven Kroll

    Listen to our apple and pumpkin playlists on Spotify here.

4. Author Studies

My kiddos love weeks that are all about the same author. They love to see the similarities in texts and read new works by authors that they love.
Choosing an author can be as easy as seeing what your library has a large quantity of or searching for an author with illustrations/content you think will appeal to your kiddos. For example, my kiddos completed a 6 week Beatrix Potter Unit study that I knew they would love because of your use of nature in her stories.

Here are a few authors to consider for Preschoolers and Kindergartners. 

  1. Beatrix Potter
  2. Eric Carle
  3. Dr. Seuss
  4. Adam Rubin
  5. Mo Williams

5. Food

Any morning basket theme that involves recipes and food always has my kiddos excited. There is something about food that connects us with each other. My kiddos love to make food with me and do a fantastic job cooking together. 

We often do morning basket at the table anyway, which is a tip I highly recommend for morning basket with littles. 

Recently, we started doing demonstration style recipes at the table also. I bring the ingredients and my kiddos take turns adding them to create the food. This can be really fun during a meal, because taste testing can be part of their plate. 

Here are a few of the food related topics we have delved into together. In addition to recipes, we read books, do activities, play games, and more with these themes.

  1. Noodles/pasta
  2. Tacos
  3. Pizza
  4. Rice Around the World

6. Character Building

We love to do character building morning basket themes. As a Christian family, we often integrate scripture and memory verses into our time in these themes. We also love to read books about specific character traits and play games to practice.
Here are a few of the character traits we have worked on together.

  1. Patience
  2. Gratitude
  3. Kindness
  4. Forgiveness
  5. Love
  6. Respect
  7. Generosity
  8. Sharing with others

7. Mushrooms

When we spent multiple weeks on our Beatrix Potter unit study, one of the weeks was spent delving into the study of mushrooms. Our morning basket theme went right along with our unit of study and supported what we were doing during the school day.

We delved deeply into different kinds of mushrooms, uses of mushrooms, poisonous versus edible, and much more during our morning basket routine. If you have a student who is a budding naturalist, then this is a great topic that will spark a lot of interest for your kiddo.

 

8. Musical Instruments

This was probably one of my favorite morning basket themes, as it really lended itself to a lot of phonemic awareness games. My kiddos didn’t even realize that they were practicing the building blocks of early literacy as we listened to classical pieces and they tried to tell me what instruments they heard.

Learning about the different sections, identifying instruments, using instruments for rhythm games in our basket, and many more activities were a part of this fascinating morning basket theme.

9. Trees

There is something about little kids and trees. My three littles are so fascinated by these tall giants and enjoy reading and learning more about them.
Here are a few of the resources from our tree morning basket.

  1. Matching Leaf Game
  2. Tree Puzzle
  3. The Magic and Mystery of Trees by Jen Green
  4. Because of an Acorn by Lola M. Schaefer

There are so many fantastic themes for morning baskets out there. Be sure to start a pinterest board of your own to gather resources and ideas. Pin this blog post and follow my Morning Basket Idea board for more Morning Basket ideas and resources.