What the heck is Morning Time?

March 13, 2025

This post first appeared as part of a longer one I originally published on February 12, 2021. I’ve excerpted, edited, and updated it here.

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What the heck is Morning Time?

Morning Time — also known as Morning Basket, Morning Meeting, Circle Time, Symposium, others I probably don’t know about — is a concept I stole from the homeschool world a long time ago (well before we starting COVID homeschooling for the 2020-21 school year).

There is a lot of information about it online, if you are interested. It is, like many homeschool things, at heart a nonsecular practice — as I have learned about it, developed our own way of doing it, and revised it again and again over the years, I have taken what I’ve liked (the ethos, the structure) and left the rest (the religious aspects, like Bible reading and hymns). The person I have learned the most from is Pam Barnhill — her website, podcast, and book, Better Together: Strengthen Your Family, Simplify Your Homeschool, and Savor the Subjects that Matter Most, are all robust, excellent resources on this topic. (She is Catholic and her approach to Morning Basket is Christian, so you are aware.)

Morning Time is, essentially, just dedicated reading time that is not bedtime, where you may or may not have a structure or plan (I have done it both ways), but you follow some semblance of a routine most days. It doesn’t have to be in the morning, it doesn’t even have to be every day, but for us, it’s over breakfast Monday-Friday. We’ve been doing this for 10 years.

Okay, I’ll bite: why Morning Time?

Establishing Morning Time was, at one point, the only way I could absolutely ensure that I read to my children every day. When I had the littlest littles — a baby and a 2yo — we would eat breakfast together, and when I was finished with my food, they would continue eating (in theory) and I read aloud for about 20 minutes.

About half the time I would prepare a stack of books the night before — pulled from a small shelf in our kitchen where I kept about 40 titles for this purpose, so the gathering didn’t take more than a minute, tops. This is where I kept any books I really wanted to make sure that we read (Hands Are Not For Hitting by Elizabeth Verdick; Teeth Are Not For Biting by Elizabeth Verdick; Your Sister Is Not For Screaming At, Pounding, or Taking Out Every Last One of Your Emotions On, an imaginary title I would still purchase today).

I built in enough time in our pre-work-and-daycare day (yes, that meant getting up a few minutes early) so that when they inevitably asked for a couple more books, I could say yes, and they’d use this shelf to grab whatever they wanted. (They were also free to change up any of the books in the stack I prepared — I wasn’t rigid about any of it, the gathering-ahead-of-time was more about saving as many minutes as possible for actual reading.)

A decade later this routine looks much the same except for a few variations: we have certain things we read on certain dates (we start the first of every month with specific poetry books), and we’ve added in chapter books, nonfiction, trivia, mental math, games, and whatever else I discover that I feel like throwing in. We still read picture books during Morning Time — I will do this for as long as they will let me — but instead of just random titles, they are more specifically chosen and planned: mostly seasonal titles but also more poetry, books about self-esteem, body safety, positive thinking; titles I want to make sure we get to (Please Let’s All Work Hard to Regulate Our Emotions, another imaginary banger I’d buy in a heartbeat and should probably just write myself). Though I have made plans in the past, for various reasons, there’s never a plan now — I just wing it, following my kids’ interests and mine.

What I’ve learned about Morning Time over the years is two-fold: one, it is an incredibly valuable practice. By doing just a little bit every day you can build something substantial and nourishing to you all. Two, start small. And (okay, three) accept that it’s never going to look exactly how you envision it.

As a homeschooler I had more elaborate plans than ever before, and more than half the time we ended up chucking them to read Beverly Cleary’s Ramona books. This was — and is — okay. Morning Time — all reading-together time — is, to me, first and foremost about relationship. I’m going to repeat that because it’s the single most important thing I want to convey: reading-together time is about relationship.

It’s easy (I mean REALLY EASY) for me to get caught up in checking off a to-do list — I’m Type A and a Virgo and I have approximately three thousand balls in my life to keep in the air — but the minute I approach Morning Time with the attitude that We Are Going To Get It All Done is the moment it all falls apart. I have to remind myself that my goal — in every aspect of our life — is to infuse my children with the sense and the knowledge that they are loved and they are important. If along the way we also manage to cultivate thinking people who love to read and learn and thus have the tools with which to live a purposeful and rich life: great. It is more than enough.

I have found pairing breakfast with reading aloud to be not only a consistent and dependable way to get some reading time in every day (for us it’s about 20 minutes on average), but also a lovely way to start our day together. It calms me, it calms my kids, it sends us all out the door with a starting point of beauty, love, and togetherness. It is such a part of our routine that if ever I suggest we skip a morning — maybe my children would like to have a picnic breakfast in another room so I can stare out the window or something — the revolt is swift and clear: absolutely not. (What was I even thinking?)

And that’s gratifying — to know I’ve built something, from very little, that has become an important and even nonnegotiable part of our family culture. 80% of the things I’ve done intentionally to that end haven’t worked out, but this one has, and I’m so grateful. I get as much out of as they do (probably more), and I hope when they think back on their childhoods, they remember the endless mornings we lit a candle and ate a warm meal, reading aloud together.

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Some of our favorite Morning Time books over the years have, honestly, been all over the place — other than seasonal titles, which I’ve shared extensively in this newsletter for years now, our selections have had no rhyme or reason (well, there has been a lot of rhyme 😉)

Here’s a short list. If I’ve reviewed any of these at any point, I’ve linked to those here.

• All of Me by Molly Bang

• Before We Eat: From Farm to Table by Pat Brisson

• Native American Animal Stories by Joseph Bruchac

• Old Mother West Wind; The Adventures of Peter Cottontail; The Adventures of Sammy Jay, all by Thornton Burgess

• Tell Me a Story: Stories from the Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America, editor Louise DeForest

• The Earth is Good: A Chant in Praise of Nature by Michael Demunn

• Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Tales of Extraordinary Women by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo (all three volumes)

• Go In and Out the Window: An Illustrated Songbook for Young People by Dan Fox

• A Child’s Book of Poems by Gyo Fujikawa

• Pass It On by Sophie Henn

• The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear and Jan Brett

• Out and About: A First Book of Poems by Shirley Hughes

• Grimms’ Fairy Tales translated by E.V. Lucas, Lucy Crane, and Marian Edwards

• Nicholas Cricket by Joyce Maxner

• Therapeutic Storytelling: 101 Healing Stories for Children by Susan Perrow

• Rain Makes Applesauce by Julian Scheer

• The Bad Mood and the Stick by Lemony Snicket

• All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir by Bill Staines, illustrated by Margot Zemach

• The Giant of Jum by Elli Woollard

• Ten Little Mummies: An Egyptian Counting Book by Philip Yates

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Micro review(s): Zigzag by Julie Paschkis (2023) and The Wordy Book by Julia Paschkis (2021)

I received a copy of this book from Enchanted Lion Books — all opinions are my own

I received a copy of this book from Enchanted Lion Books — all opinions are my own

If you need two book suggestions for Morning Time, look no further than these two quiet gems — both vibrant celebrations of words, creativity, and imagination — from the wonderful Julie Paschkis.

In Zigzag, an alligator savors words by tasting and feeling them. One day, while enjoying the delicious word “tambourine,” he accidentally swallows all the vowels, and chaos ensues — words are stripped of their vowels, turning “apple” into “ppl,” “sleep” into “slp,” “glad” into “gld,” and so on. (It’s an ingenious way to highlight the importance of vowels and their function.)

The Wordy Book has no narrative but instead offers dreamy connections between sound, meaning, design, and beyond, which serves as not only an inventive exploration of language, but an invitation to play with words in the same way.

I know some of you have readers who adore wordplay, so definitely do not miss either of these. For those of you who have yet to explore this rich territory — and are looking for books to start a Morning Time practice of your own — I encourage you to check these out. Paschkis creates one-of-a-kind picture books — almost always playful, with her signature colorful, folk-art-inspired illustrations — full of energy that makes them come alive and appeal to a wide range of readers, all the way from preschool to late elementary.

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Morning Time may not be your thing, and that’s cool. Just remember that your family reading life doesn’t have to look like you think it should look, and it doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s, either.

Finding time to read to your children is challenging and can even feel impossible, but I promise you it’s not. It takes a little creativity and effort, but it can be done, and you are the person to do it.

You got this 💪
Sarah