Our 2026-2027 High School Morning Basket | Morning Time with a Teen

Hey everybody, welcome to the Waldock Way. I'm Jessica. And today's video is going to be all about our morning basket for high school. Because Emily is a teenager who has a very, very busy schedule, our morning basket is going to look different kind of than it really ever has cuz we're only going to be able to get it in 3 days a week, which is making me a little bit sad because it's one of my favorite parts of homeschooling. And I could have given it up, but that's not happening. We're just going to make it work. It's going to be a little more abbreviated than usual or than what it's been in the past. Um and I have kind of scheduled things and put them on a specific day, which I don't normally do. I normally just loop through. Here's the thing, you guys. My brain is shot. Like, perimenopause is doing a number on me. So, the more things that I can automate, the better my life is. So, my plan, once I know that this is going to work, what I'm going to share with you guys is I'm going to put it on a piece of cardstock, laminate it, and stick it in the morning basket. And that way, when I it's whatever day it is and I pull it out, I'm like, "Oh, this is what we do today." Because otherwise, I would have just looped through. But, in the past, while that worked, now it's not going to work because my brain is going to be like, "Oh, wait. What did we do?" Because remember, we're only doing morning basket 3 days a week and it happens to be every other day. So, I'm not going to remember what we did 2 days ago. Like, that's not going to happen. This is what I'm working with. I'm going to tell you guys what we're going to do every single time we meet, which would be daily. I'm going to tell you guys what we're going to do weekly. And then, once we've tried that for a few weeks and it's cemented in, I'm going to literally write that down, laminate it, stick it in the basket so I don't have to think about it. It's done and ready to go. And I think that's going to make it like actually happen. So, 3 days a week, which should be if her schedule holds up to what I am looking at right now is going to be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Every single day that we do morning time, which by the way does not happen in the morning anymore. It's much closer to lunch time in our home school, but that doesn't really matter. It's happening one way or the other, and it's morning for her. So, every single day when we sit down at we're going to start with World Watch News. That's a 10-minute video of um current events. We did um we tried CNN 10, and we didn't love CNN 10, so we're going to try out World Watch News this year. So, we'll start with that. And then we will go into Everyday Amazing. This is just one random fact a day. Emily loves trivia, and I love the rabbit trails that these kinds of things send us on, things that we maybe never would have thought about or never would have talked about. So, I'm really excited for that because it is basically just a random fact every day of the year. And I mean random. Like, for example, on April 4th, it says, "You look nice. Today the people of West African Republic of Senegal celebrate their independence. Schools close, and there are parades in the capital city Dakar. Dakar sits on the coast, and every Sunday morning shepherds bring their flocks to the beach to wash them in the water of the Atlantic Ocean and trim their hooves." That would work really great with our world history and geography this year. But I mean, just random facts like that. Now, we are only doing morning basket 3 days a week. We will not be making this up. Like, if it's January 15th when we sit down, we're going to read the fact from January 15th, and we're going to move on with our lives. I'm not worrying about missing days. Maybe we'll do it more than 1 year, and we'll get those in other times, but this is just meant to be fun, and so I'm not trying to stress myself out by making the days up. We will just sit down and do the fact for whatever day that is. Um same thing with World Watch News, we're just going to watch it the day that we sit down. Okay, after we do World Watch News and our fact, then we are going to read from one of our personal growth books. Now, most of these are books that I had picked out for last year that we didn't get to um because we take them slower than I initially anticipated because of the conversations that go along with them. So, we're just going to keep working through these. I don't know if we'll get through all of them. These are just the ones I have picked for this like category of morning time, and I don't pick the order. I just let Emily pick which one she feels like she wants to do next. So, we have How to Win Friends and Influence People for Teens. A Teen's Guide to the Five Love Languages. Brave, which is a Teen Girl's Guide to Beating Worry and Anxiety. The Confidence Code for Girls. Winning the War in Your Mind for Teens. Rich Dad, Poor Dad for Teens. What Color Is Your Parachute for Teens? And The Seven Highly Effective Habits of Teens. The last thing we're going to be doing every single day is our read-aloud. Now, I picked read-alouds ahead of time, which I don't normally do. Normally, we just kind of wing it for what we're feeling, but I picked read-alouds because I feel like our years like I finally feel the impending doom of the end of homeschool. And these were all like Newbery winners or medalists that I've been wanting to read in our homeschool that we haven't gotten to yet. So, I basically went through kind of the list of like these are all the books I wanted to read and I picked a book based off of geographic location, one for every continent except Antarctica that we will be studying. So, we're going to be doing world geography and history in our home school like with our regular lessons. So, I added one of these to our morning basket to read aloud so that we can like read them together and discuss them together because it's something I've been wanting to do and we will just tie them in to whenever we're doing that continent in um traveling the world. So, like whenever we get to South America, we'll read the South America book. Now, does that mean that if South America takes us longer, we're going to not have a read aloud if we're done with this book? No, we'll just move along to whichever one we were going to do next. Like I'm not going to make it exact, but that's just kind of the plan. So, I have Secret of the Andes for South America, Call It Courage for Oceania, A Single Shard for Asia, Esperanza Rising for North America, Number the Stars for Europe, and A Long Walk to Water for Africa. Those are the things we're going to be doing each and every day. We're going to watch our current events, we're going to read an amazing fact, we're going to read from our personal growth and we're going to read aloud from one of the geography based books. And then the rest of the things in our morning basket are going to be done weekly. So, one time a week. And like I said, because I just need it like done for me and I don't need to think about it, I have attached them to days. So, on Monday, we will be doing the executive function mindset cards. And the reason I wanted to do these on a Monday is so that they can be left out all week long. They have this little wooden like display tray, and then you can put the card in. So, this way once we've done them on Monday, they can be left out for her to reference all week long. Um last year in our morning basket, we really focused on positive thinking and kind of that sort of mindset. So, this year I wanted to function on the focus on the function part, like the executive function, because my goal is to raise to raise a well-rounded human being, not just a smart one. For example, it says, "Clear the noise to find the work." And then it says, "Mental clutter makes real work harder to find. Start by cutting inputs, not adding effort." And then there's like all of these little callouts, which are tips for how to do that. So, the plan is to do one of those a week and then leave it on display for the entire week. And then after we do that, I will be doing Major Events and World History. There are 50 in this book, so we will just read one a week. Um maybe two. It'll just depend on what time, like at one minimum, possibly two. And these are just like short little like information about the events that happened. What I like though is that it includes some sort of history revealed facts at the end, and if you want to explore more, there's like tips for how you could explore more kind of about this. Um this is obviously not all we're going to be doing for history, but I thought it would be a really great addition and something that we could have in there that her and I could discuss, because I was telling you the conversations are where it's at with teens. Wednesday, we'll do all of our daily stuff, and then we are going to be doing Modern Manners for Teens. This is volume two. We did volume one last year and this is just a short little for example start a conversation which is the you know manner that we're talking about and then it kind of says like do you want to be more successful in your friendships, relationships and career? Learn how to start a conversation and try this simple formula. So like it gives you the formula and then there's even further talking about it on the back. So that's I mean that's it. So one a week. And then after we do our manners, we are going to read from Mightier Than the Sword. This is something I purchased I think last year maybe the year before to add to our home school and we just never got to it because there wasn't like a sure fire place for it. So I was like you know what, we're going to put it in our morning basket cuz then I know it will get done. And the reason that I really wanted to do this is because this is Rebels, Reformers and Revolutionaries who changed the world through their writing. And Emily has a really really been loving writing lately. She's even maybe toying with it for a career possibly. And so I thought this would be a really great way for her like get to know people who were famous writers and how they changed the world through writing. And so there are 50 people in here. And so we will just read through one to two each week. So like that's one. So they're just like two two spreads. And then I don't know that we will do it every time but there's normally like a writing prompt. Like right now, write a prose poem about a significant event in your life using figurative language. So that's not going to be part of our morning basket. However, I will obviously read them and present them to Emily because it's something that she may actually enjoy doing in her free time which is why I put that on Wednesday because that is the day that she has the most free time available to her. Friday we will do all of our daily things and then we will do the Thinking Toolbox. So we did the Fallacy Detective, um which is kind of like the first level of this and we really liked it. And so this is 35 lessons that will build your reasoning skills. Um so we are just going to be doing this. I mean they're just like short you know, like you read this. So let's see. That was like a page and a half and then there's exercises. But we'll do those out loud. Like I'll read it and then she'll just answer me out loud um because those are like is this is this thing this quote trustworthy or not trustworthy? Again, we'll just have amazing discussions. And then after we read from that, we will read from 42 Artists You Should Know. Which again, this is just a really beautiful like two-page spread about the artist. Um I also love that it has like a timeline down here so that you can see where in history it falls or when in history it falls. Each one is about two spreads. But it's not a ton of reading because it has such beautiful um you know, works of theirs. So I think we'll probably again we'll do one to two a week. It's just going to depend on timing. So there you have it. That is everything that is going to be in our high school morning basket and kind of how we're hoping that it plays out. If you would like to actually see this like in real life as a vlog, let me know down in the comments and I'll get it on our list. It'll probably take us a month before we would get it done because I really like I said, I want us to keep trying it and make sure this works. And since some of the things are only happening once a week, we will have to do it for a few weeks before we know if this set up is going to work the way I'm hoping it's going to.