Morning Baskets are wonderful things. If you are not using morning baskets, you should. Each morning basket that I craft is like a present to my toddler. Yes, it is comprised of things we already have around the house; however, it becomes brand new when I pair it with other items. This month, I am focusing my lessons on ‘Me and My Body’. We are practicing self-care. This morning basket focused on emotional and physical health for a toddler. I lovingly called it Evie’s morning wellness basket.
With this basket, I wanted to focus on a couple of different things:
- Improving communication
- Fine motor activity
- Introducing physical education
- Improving emotional understanding
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In your morning wellness basket for your child, you’ll want to include several books. Reading with your child is VERY important! The effects of reading are remarkable! Reading can help with cognitive and language development, increase a child’s attention span, teach life lessons, and aid in social and emotional development. One of the first books that I chose for this basket was ‘ABCs of Kindness’. This book is wonderful! Not only does it go over the alphabet; but also, it assigns a way to care for each letter.
Next, I wrote Evie’s name in dots so that she could practice tracing her name! I am aware that developmentally, my child does not have the fine motor skills to accurately complete this activity. I didn’t expect her to! For this activity, I was focusing on familiarizing Evie with the letters in her name and practicing holding a pen with a proper grip. We were both content with pretending that she was tracing the dots!
I also included some yoga cards. On TPT, I found these AMAZING yoga pose cards from Tiny Trees Yoga. Did I mention that they were FREE? If your child is cautious, like mine is, with trying new movements, try yoga! These poses are fun and can help build your child’s confidence (and muscles) to help support healthy physical development. Evie loved picking out new yoga cards and trying them out. She didn’t do the poses perfectly and some of them were almost impossible for her, but she was excited to try. With practice, we can work our way up to the more challenging poses.
Finally, I included a baby doll and a bib in Evie’s morning wellness basket. This was our segway into a dramatic play. Evie ended up acting out our entire morning routine with the doll. She woke the baby up, dressed the baby, made the baby some breakfast, bathed the baby, and put the baby to sleep…several times. I love introducing the baby doll into her morning basket because it allows her to practice things that we discuss: healthy choices, kindness, and empathy. What is play if not an opportunity to explore and practice life skills?
Overall, I love morning baskets, especially on our ‘lazy’ weekend mornings. I would love to hear about your experiences with morning baskets in the comments below!