What is a homeschool morning menu you may ask? A morning menu is a group of practices, recitations, or skills that a child will repeat each morning in printable form. A homeschool morning menu can be adapted for specific age groups and added throughout the year.
As a homeschool mom, morning time for our family has become a little chaotic. I’ve honestly been on the brink of wanting to give up and just call it a complete disaster, but then again, no one said homeschooling was going to be simple and easy. One thing that has helped our chaotic morning times is creating a ‘morning basket’. This morning basket is filled with constructive things to do while I work. I’m sure I will go into more detail in the following blog posts, but for the time being, I want to introduce you to the thing that has made the most difference and that is our printable homeschool morning menu.
With my own kids, I use this to develop a morning routine with school before we get rolling with our day. For us, it’s a great way to establish the start of the learning day. Young learners and older ones alike will enjoy the benefits and fun of a morning menu! Often we use our morning menu as a time filler right before we do our read alouds
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What is in a Homeschool Morning Menu
I want to continue to emphasize that everyone’s morning menu can have different items based on age, the child’s needs, and your family’s unique homeschool or life experience. I will explain what we have in our morning menu for my five-year-old and my three-year-old.
If you are looking for content for older children, this post has some helpful content and freebies for older children. This homeschool morning menu was specifically made with younger children in mind.
My boys’ morning menus look slightly different from each other, but the bulk of them are similar. I print everything for my three-year-old but don’t enforce the same amount of ‘perfection’ as I do for my five-year-old. Older kids and younger kids can enjoy these morning menu sheets!
Because I work from home, our morning basket veers slightly from the purpose I see with many other homeschool families. Typically I see morning baskets that are used for family group time in the morning. They contain read-aloud books and activities the family does together. Our morning basket includes items that are special for morning play (while I’m still working) and then group activities that we do together.
Our homeschool morning menu is a major part of our morning basket. It is the thing that signifies the transition from individual play or work time to group time as a family.
What is in our Homeschool Morning Menu?
The boys’ morning menu correctly consists of:
- ABC practice- these are specifically great for young learners!
- 1, 2, 3 practice
- Writing, spelling, and saying the letters in their name
- Weather and seasons
- Days of the week
- Months of the year
- Right and left-hand exercise
- The 10 commandments
- Pledge of Allegiance
More pages are available in our expansion pack!
Take a closer look at some of the pages below. My five-year-old’s favorite page is the weather page because he says it’s the only one he doesn’t have to ‘think’ when doing. The name practice sheet will need to be printed twice. In the “I can spell my name” the letters can be cut, laminated, and then attached using velcro sticky dots.
Want More?
We have an expansion pack available with even more morning menu pages included!
58 pages!
• Morning Menu Cover Page (4 options) – cute preschool morning time menu covers!
• 12 Calendar Pages (January – December)
• Feelings/Emotions Page – perfect for younger children!
• Alphabet Tracing Pages (32 pages!)
• Number Tracing Pages (2 pages)
• Learn my Name Page
• Pattern Page
• Shapes Page
• Recitation Pages (scripture, Pledge of Allegiance, 10 Commandments)
• Bible Verses page
These pages are powerful tools for your morning no matter if your child goes to public school, private, or is home-educated. They are especially beneficial for preschool and kindergarten, but the concept can be tweaked for any age!
How to Make a Morning Menu
There are two ways you can make the pages usable for dry-erase markers. You can either laminate the pages and then bind them with a ring, or you can purchase menus covers that a restaurant would use. These restaurant menus make the pages inside erasable. Either way, the pages will become reusable for your kiddos to do every morning.
Don’t forget we also have an expansion pack that has even more than the freebie!
We have done it both ways. At first, I laminated the pages and just bound them with a ring at the top and bottom. As we began to use them more and I wanted to change out the materials, we started using a menu that I purchased from Amazon, you can get the exact one we used here. Why use a menu? Often times morning menus will get changed out frequently throughout the year as your child masters a skill or recitation. Instead of needing to laminate everything over and over again, you can change out the sheets of paper.
However, if you want to start off with laminating, we love our basic laminator and continue to be amazed by the very affordable price tag! As of April 2023, the original Amazon basics laminator that was only around $25 went out of stock, however, this is a similar version.
How to Use a Morning Menu
Once you have your pages chosen and put inside the restaurant menus, you will want to make sure you have ample dry-erase markers. Just trust me on this one. My kids go through those dry-erase markers almost like they were candy! As the year goes on trade out different pages as your learner becomes more skilled in the morning menu sheets.
You really can do these morning menus at any point in your day. We do them in the morning before we get started on anything else. However, I’ve heard of people incorporating them into calendar time, end of day routine, group time, and many other time frames. Do what works for you!
You could add a nature study to the morning menu binder or many other sheets throughout the year as your young learner grows. Adding a composer study for older kids is a great idea. Here are two options below:
These are all synonyms of each other! Basically, they are all a way of saying a similar or the same thing. Obviously, each one might vary slightly and the purpose behind the name will all be unique, but they are essentially all very similar.
Cindy Rollins originally coined the term “Morning Time” so her website has many valuable resources. I also highly recommend her book about morning time.
I like to think of morning time as a way of starting your day as a family. It’s a way of unifying your day and starting each day fresh and new! No matter what your morning time consists of, it can be a time of refreshment and fun as you start your day together!
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
Lamentations 3:22-23 ESV
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
More Printables for Kids!
Want to grab more free printables for kids that are faith-based, helpful, and beautiful? Get in on the Kids Printables Vault! You will get the Morning Menu printable plus all the additional printables that are in my vault such as Bible coloring, Fruit of the Spirit resources, and Bible activities. There also is an entire library of holiday printables such as Christmas and Easter.
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How to Customize the Morning Menu
The button below will take you to a Canva template with the morning menu bundle that you can customize to your liking. Where the word “Name” appears you can replace it with your own child’s name. As we add more pages for Bible verse memorization and other early elementary skills, the template will update. If you have questions on how to edit the document or need help, feel free to contact me! I’m always happy to help.
Don’t Forget to Pin for Later!
