I haven’t blogged about what’s in my Morning Basket in a while. Morning Basket time is when I share what is good, true and beautiful with my son who is the last one left in my homeschooling nest. The Advent season makes it extra exciting. So many, many wonderful, beautifully illustrated books abound about Christmas for us to enjoy!

Here’s what we are doing for Morning Basket time this month.

Year, round we always start out with this book above to see what happened on this day. It has a few interesting historical facts for each of the 365 days of the whole year. On Monday we go over Monday and Sunday, and on Friday we read the Friday and the Saturday entries. I have a similar book way at the bottom below to bookend with this.

OK, now on to Christmas-themed material!

Then we read aloud an article or story from one of the December magazines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I just love all of these! I’ve been reading all of them since I was about 10 or 11. When I couldn’t sleep at those ages, I would go into the hallway where my mom had a stack of old issues in a box, and I would read them until I was sleepy and go back to bed. I have a bunch of Christmas stories curated from these magazines over here in my FREE family devotionals ebook.

I’m focusing on the For the Strength of Youth, which is for teenagers, then/if we finish all of those stories, we’ll do the stories in the Liahona, which is for adults, and then the Friend.

I heard about this book above from veteran homeschooler Carole Joy Seid’s podcast down below and knew I had to get it. I’m looking forward to finding out what is really inside the huge box that this little family receives on Christmas Eve. They are told it’s a lion, but we shall see. We do 5-6 pages a day.

Then this one below I found when thrifting sometime in the past year or two. I have never read this one either. Some years I’ve read aloud books to the younger children that I already read to the older children. So I already know what happens. Such is not the case this year. It’s about a family that moves from Utah to Arizona after losing a bunch of money and having to start over. They end up having a rich, yet grumpy landlord/neighbor. Just with the title’s name I can tell what will happen already and you probably can too. I’m counting on it being heartwarming!

I just love picking up what look like promising Christmas chapter books and picture books from thrift stores throughout the year and saving them for Christmas. Then when I get them out with the Christmas decorations right after Thanksgiving it’s a little surprise because I’ve forgotten what I bought. A little foretaste of being surprised on December 25th.

We started this one below last year, maybe the year before, and never finished it. I found it at a thrift store. It’s a novel about Mary the mother of Jesus, and Joseph, especially their journey to Bethlehem. It’s for adults and every wordy so we just do 2-4 pages a day. It’s fun to read about one person’s idea of what they were like and what their journey must have been like.

Then we are doing one or two Christmas picture books a day. Picture books are not just for children! Teens and adults can learn from them too. I love reading the ones that either make me laugh, give me that cozy Christmas vibe, or help me learn about the first Christmas story or Christmas history, cutlure, and lore. Go here to see my HUGE list.

Then we do a chapter a day from this book above. We’ll do A Christmas Carol the week of Christmas. We did the one below last year. It’s just fun to experience different versions of this beloved classic.

I have so many Christmas picture books and the above chapter books are long enough and our Morning Basket time is so short that we’ll be spilling over all this material into January. Which is totally OK for me. I love reading Christmas stories in January. No Christmas police are coming to get me.

We end by reading what happened for the day in the world of children’s literature from the book above. It has fun and interesting tidbits about authors and illustrators with great suggestions of titles.

When MB time is done, it’s on to math for my son. While he does it, I sit by him and have my drawing time. Then throughout the day I’ll be continuing with my Merry Mother’s Christmas Curriculum, which I detail over here.

I’d love to hear what you are reading or learning about in your December/Christmas Morning Basket. Merry Christmas!