Lets Talk Circle Time

[cheerfuldom]

do you do a circle time every day? how long does it last? what is the sequence of activities?

would anyone like to share helpful links? or your masterlist of songs and finger plays?

any ideas for adding felt board stories?

what about introducing concepts like the weather or days of the week?

[Blackcat31]

Lots of threads about circle time https://www.daycare.com/forum/tags.php?tag=circle+time

[daycare]

do you do a circle time every day? how long does it last? what is the sequence of activities?

would anyone like to share helpful links? or your masterlist of songs and finger plays?

any ideas for adding felt board stories?

what about introducing concepts like the weather or days of the week?

I do a circle time every day...
I always open with a dancing song to get the kids really worked up. We dance to a song called everybody on the rug.
Then we go sit and go over the calendar. we continue to stand and sing the days of the week. We count the days. So today we had to jump 19 times, the we stomped 19 times, jumped again 19 time (I have a crazy bunch of kids) and then we clapped 19 times.

To bring it down by singing shake your sillies out. the last verse we sit and whisper our crazies out which brings us to criss cross applesauce hands in your lap.

I then bring out a story book of the day that pretains to our lessons. Then again to our feet and we will sing a song that relates to song and book.
LIke the foot book by doctor seuss, after we read that we sang, I have two feet how about you.

Again break it down with a sitting game of hot potato. The best that the kids could do it. I have them say their first and last name when they have the potato before they release it.

We sing another song and I dismiss each one to a center....

We do this every day, except friday's we only do dancing and the calendar..

[AnythingsPossible]

I call our's Calendar Time. They get to put the calendar piece on, we discuss the days of the week. We have our song for the day of the week. We count how many days have gone by.

We have a weather puppet who come out to talk to them about what the weather is like for the day. They put the sun/clouds/snow/ran whatever pertains to our weather that day on her. She tells them she is happy to see them today, and gives them all hugs goodbye, and tells them to have fun outside today. They LOVE the weather puppet.

We also use this time to discuss our letter/shape/color that we are focusing on. We do flash cards, memory games, matching games, that sort of thing.

Depending on the day it can last anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes.

[Abigail]

I started out trying to do the whole circle time thing, but my oldest is 2.5 years old. We do circle time after breakfast and all we do is the calendar and abc flashcards and we'll sing a song just to sing together (mostly me)! It's been Twinkle Twinkle Little Star the last two weeks. When I always have access to a cd player I will be playing a song over and over to help us learn a new song,but for now it's just me and a group of 2 year olds!

[Ariana]

I do circle every day. I usually "wing it"!! I have a bunch of resources and a few minutes before circle I'll go through my stuff and pick out what I'm going to do. I will sometimes plan circle as well but not usually.

I have a "good morning" song.
Then we talk about the weather how everyone is feeling that day.
Then I do either a couple of songs/poems with actions or a felt board story or song
Then we do 2 books
Then it's our "goodbye" song.

It's roughly 20 minutes depending on how cooperative everyone is. I get my felt board stuff from an associaton I'm a member of for childcare providers. They have monthly "make and take" workshops where you go, get all the matierials to make a bunch of circle activities and you pay around $15 for everything.

[momma2girls]

I have circletime for preschool aged children only. I have a weather, date, and day, with changing dates, weather, etc. on it. I purchased these thru oriental trading(I am pretty sure anyways) I received 4 different ones, for 4 different children. They are great. I don't have anyone right now, that is preschool age yet- my oldest one is 2. We do this during our am snacks.

[EntropyControlSpecialist]

We have a morning circle time and an afternoon circle time at Preschool. Ages 3-5.

Morning circle time (~20 min.):
Good morning song (english and spanish)
Pledge of Allegiance
Discussing the states (all of them now know Texas, we're on New Mexico)
Coin chant (with coins for each child)
ABC Phonics Song
Lesson
Story

Afternoon circle time:
Calendar Time
(Month, date, count the days of the month, days of the week in english and spanish, Yesterday was ___, Today is ____, Tomorrow will be ____)
10 Commandments (we do 1 a week)
Weather
Shapes/Colors
Lesson review/further discussion
Story