Morning messages for toddlers and other loved ones | RaisedGrounded

I recently came across the concept of morning messages. Morning messages are, apparently, a staple of many classrooms in early education.¹ Some states, such as NJ, even mandate morning messages in kindergarten². Mailbox activities are also a popular activity for kids at home.³

Having a morning message/ mailbox routine can be a quick, fun, educational thing to do with your toddler or older child at home. You can even add a sweet morning message for your spouse while you’re at it. : )

What are the advantages of including a morning message in your morning routine? And what are some examples of morning messages to get you started? Let’s delve in.

What are morning messages?

Spencer from ToddlersCanRead says that “a morning message is a message that we write for our kids at the beginning of the day”¹.

They can change from day to day and evolve as your child grows.

Structure of morning messages

Morning messages are quite short. Often, morning messages have some recurring elements, that help structure the message: ^{1,4, 12}

• a greeting with the child’s name or nickname (e.g., Dear _________, Good morning _________, Hey _________).
• a statement of love (e.g., including a sentence such as “You are super special and loved!”¹², saying “I love you!” at the beginning or signing with Love, ________ or With Love, _________ at the end)
• the day of the week and date (e.g., today is Tuesday, January 30, 2024).
• the day’s message – that can be anything, really: from an activity you’re doing today, a concept, a question, something you’re grateful for, a new word, …
• a wish for the day (optional), e.g., “Let’s have a great day!”¹², Have a great day!, Have a fun day!, Have a wonderful day!, …
• a signature (e.g., signing with mommy/daddy or whatever title you use)

That’s for the message that you write for your child. For your spouse, you can be way more flexible, as s/he already knows the days of the week, for instance.

Creating and reading the morning messages

In classrooms, creating the message is often pretty one-sided. Some teachers write the morning message before the children arrive, while others construct it with the children present ⁸. Some teachers leave part of it blank to have the children complete it (e.g., only writing “”“_ _ursday May 7””, with the children having to “fill in the missing letters”)⁴.

At home, while you write a message for your child and your spouse, your morning message routine can also include the child creating a morning message for your spouse. For a toddler, that means scribbles. : ) You can switch up the materials. For instance, one day it can be colored pencils, another day crayons, etc.

Put all the messages into a simple mailbox. (That can be easily made with some cardboard, for instance, at the beginning). Your child can help put them in.

Then, e.g., at the end of breakfast, have your child get the messages out of the mailbox, read the messages, and if you want, do a quick enrichment activity. For instance, if your child starts to recognize the first letters, you could ask him/her to find all the “o”s in the message. Or if your message includes a question, you can talk about it. Or if you include some hearts in different colors as a quick decoration, you can talk about the shape and the colors. (More ideas below).

What are the advantages of morning messages?

Routine

Toddlers thrive on routine. “Consistent routines […] provide comfort and a sense of safety to young children.”⁵ They are also “rich opportunities to support your child’s learning and development.”⁵

Language learning

Morning messages are part of a print-rich environment. Your child is seeing his/her name as well as other words in print. You’re reading and talking about it. That all helps with children’s language development and eventually with learning how to read. One study with preschool students in Michigan found that during morning message time, teachers show much more of the “Essential Instructional Practices in Early Literacy – Prekindergarten” than during reading time or small group time.⁹

handwriting

If you can, have your child watch you write the messages (for instance while your child is scribbling his/her own message for your spouse). According to one survey, only 51.4% of people in the U.K. “still write by hand every day”, and 16.5% “couldn’t remember the last time they wrote something by hand.”⁶ But young children learn a lot by observation and want to copy their parents. So what happens if they rarely see the adults in their lives writing anything by hand? It’s probably going to be much harder for them to learn to write by hand themselves than if they regularly see their parents writing.

And writing by hand is an important skill for them to learn down the road. Several research studies have shown that writing by hand leads to more activity and elaborate connections in the brain. Typing doesn’t. That means writing by hand is better for remembering new information and learning ⁷.

Fine motor skills

Moreover, scribbling, writing, or drawing their own morning message helps toddlers, preschoolers, and older children in developing their fine motor skills.

Being happier

And morning messages are not just beneficial for your child. Research has shown that regularly writing down what you’re grateful for (sometimes called “count your blessings” or a gratitude journal) makes you happier. So include that in your message, e.g., to your spouse, at least once a week (or maybe even every day).

More marital satisfaction

And by the way: having regular expressions of gratitude/ appreciation in your morning message to your spouse is not just good for you, but for your marriage, too. Research by “Harvard Health shows that couples who show gratitude for their partner, and who express that gratitude regularly, feel more positively towards their partner”¹³. Another study with married couples from the University of North Carolina shows that both how much a person feels and how much a person expresses gratitude are significantly related to how satisfied s/he feels with the marriage. And the more a person feels grateful, the more satisfied his/her spouse feels with the marriage.¹⁴

Sounds good. But I need more examples of what I can write about in my morning messages to my young child

No problem. Here are some more examples. Keep in mind that the morning message should be short. So don’t try to cram too much into one individual message.

Talk about what’s going to happen that day

Do you have any specific plans for the day such as going to a playgroup or the park, talking to the grandparents on Zoom, or doing a fun activity? Is it the child’s or a relative’s birthday? All these things can be a topic for a morning message. You can include the time if you want to talk about how telling time works and you know for sure what time it is going to be (e.g., the library program will be at 10 am.)⁴. If there’s “anything that’s out of the typical routine” it’s important to incorporate that into the morning message ¹.

What kind of phrases can you use? Here are some examples.

• It’s your grandpa’s birthday!
• Today, you are 17 months old.
• It’s library day.
• We will go to the library today.
• “I am so excited for you to learn how to”_____¹⁸ (also e.g., I’m so excited… ….we’re going to_____, or: ….today is ______)
• Today, we’re going to prepare for our big trip.
• “We have library today. :)” ¹² (this morning, this afternoon, at _____ o’clock, at ____ pm, tonight, ….)
• “Remember, [library] today!” ¹²
• Grandpa “is coming to [visit] us today!” ¹²
• “You will cook today.”¹⁵
• “Our special today is GYM.”¹⁶
• “We will build something in science today.”¹⁶
• “Today, I am excited that we are going to learn about _______.”¹²

You can even ask for your child’s input. For instance, “How can we make today a great day?”¹⁸ is very open-ended. Easier, especially for younger children who might not have that many words yet, is to give them a choice between two activities that you would be okay with, e.g., “Would you like to go to the playground today or to the forest?”

Talk about what’s going to happen in the future, or what happened in the past

For big things, you can also give your child a heads up some time before. For instance,

• Just 2 more days until we go on our big trip.
• “We will go to the zoo tomorrow.”¹⁵

You can also talk about what happened yesterday (or at any time in the past). For instance,

• I really enjoyed making a bird feeder with you yesterday.
• “what was your favorite part of Dot Day yesterday?”¹⁷
• When I was a child, I liked pasta. Do you like pasta? (This can also be used for, an activity, a color, a season, etc. It can also be extended to be more open-ended, e.g., When I was a child, I liked pasta. Daddy liked peas. What food do you like?)

Talk about the seasons or the weather

Does the weather app predict heavy snowfall? Did you look out the window in the morning and see that the snow has been thawing? etc. Those are great days to incorporate talking about the weather into your morning message. You can also talk about seasons (e.g., Today is the official start of summer. “Summer is the season that comes after spring.”¹ and then e.g., something you look forward to doing in the summer). You can also describe what you like about a particular season/ weather or ask what they like about it ¹.

Introduce other concepts

Besides the weather, you can use the morning message to introduce other concepts, such as holidays, traditions, facial expressions, sounds, animals, … . Spencer from ToddlersCanRead has several examples of how to do this.

You can also introduce a concept that is relevant to the day ahead. For instance, if you plan to do some fun snow activities, you could include something like “Did you know that snow is a form of water?” before going into the plan for the day.

Talk about something your child is learning

There is so much to choose from here. For instance,

• “I enjoyed reading [_______] with you yesterday.”⁴ (e.g. the book title or the topic such as ‘about firefighters’) And then ask a question about the book. This can be for instance about a character ⁴ or also about applying what they’ve learned. So if a character said something nice in the book, you could ask “What are some positive ways to use our words?”²³
• “We learned about [] shapes yesterday. Can you look around and identify”⁴ a circle, rectangle, etc. (whatever you were working on). The same can be applied to colors or body parts, for instance.
• If they’re working letters, you can ask them to “think of a word that starts with the sound____”⁴.

You can also have them point out something in the message. For instance:

• Draw hearts in different colors. Let them find the yellow (or red, or whatever) heart.
• Let your child “find and circle all of the times they see” a specific letter or sound ¹. Or a specific number¹⁰.
• Let your child count something in the message, e.g., the number of hearts, the number of words, …. ¹.
• Let your child read out loud the words they already know by themselves, “while you read the longer words to them”¹ .
• Use a “literacy artifact”⁹ to introduce words/ concepts, e.g., if the message talks about a banana, show them a real banana. This can be used to smoothly transition into an activity (e.g., making something with the banana in the kitchen).

Talk about something you noticed your child doing

Doesn’t it feel good when your spouse acknowledges something you’re doing, e.g. around the house? Children like it, too, when you “notice what they have been up to.”¹¹ Praise them for them instead of comparing them to other people. For instance ““I’m so proud of you for learning how to spell such tricky words!” is more empowering than “I’m so proud of you for coming in first in the spelling bee.””²⁰

Research has shown that praising the “process”, effort, and trying again after failure as well as being specific is especially beneficial¹⁹. For instance,

• I’m so proud you kept trying to __________ yesterday.
• “I’m so impressed at how hard you worked on”_____________ ²⁰
• “You did a nice job waiting your turn to talk while I was on the phone.”²⁰
• “Thank you for being so patient while we waited in line” at the store. ²⁰
• “Thanks for helping with the dishes. I really appreciated your lending a hand.”²⁰
• “I can really tell how much you’ve been practicing ___________. You’re better at _________ than you were at the beginning of the season.” (or last week, last month, yesterday, ….)²⁰
• “I can see how you’ve gotten really good at doing [_______]. It really shows that you’ve been practicing.” ²²
• “it was kind of you to stick up for your friend.”²¹
• “You colored that picture with [a] bright blue crayon”²² or “Look at all that” blue color²²
• “Wow. I can see why you’re excited [about _________]. You worked really hard.”²¹
• “Thank you for listening/following the rules. I know it took hard work to do that.”²¹
• “I like how much attention you are paying to detail”²²
• “It’s great how you are working to figure out this problem”²²
• “I like seeing you put so much effort into this.”²²
• “Wow — you couldn’t do that before! It’s so fun watching you learn new things.” ²²
• “I’m proud of the effort you put into this.”²²
• “You kept going even when it was hard, that’s amazing!”²²
• You put in a lot of effort there and it shows, look how tall that tower is!”²²
• “You stuck with it and showed perseverance and that’s why the tower is so tall!”²²
• “Look at that, you didn’t give up and you got it!”²²
• “I’m so proud of you for trying” _______ ²²
• “You did it. […] Look at that [tower]! It’s so” tall.²²
• “Hey do you remember that drawing you did earlier? You were really frustrated when you couldn’t get the colors to match what you had in your mind, but then you took a breath and tried another way. I was just thinking about that. That was awesome”²²
• “You know what is really awesome? I can tell that you’re working hard and doing your best and even though you got frustrated, you kept trying. Every practice and every mistake will ultimately make you better and better.”²²
• “wow! You’re trying so hard [to _________]! That’s amazing!”²²

References:
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2 New Jersey Department of Education (2011). New Jersey Kindergarten Implementation Guidelines. https://www.nj.gov/education/earlychildhood/grkto3/docs/Kimplementation.pdf (last checked: January 28, 2024)
3 Ashley. (n.d.) Mailbox pretend play as this reader's go-to activity. https://handsonaswegrow.com/mailbox-pretend-play/?utm_source=ConvertKit&utm_medium=email&utm_content=day5-activity&utm_campaign=PLAY-part1 (last checked: January 28, 2024)
4 Jones, S. (2021). MORNING MEETING MESSAGE IDEAS FOR KINDERGARTEN, FIRST, AND SECOND GRADE! https://susanjonesteaching.com/morning-meeting-message-ideas-for-kindergarten-first-and-second-grade/ (last checked: January 28, 2024)
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