Circle Time

[spud912]

I wasn't sure whether to post this in Curriculum or over here. What do you all do during circle time?

I have school time where we do our lessons (letters, numbers, colors, shapes, etc.) and then we sometimes migrate to the floor to talk about the theme. I usually end up not having much academic stuff to go over on the floor for "circle time." Most of my lessons work out better on a table (such as tracing letters, counting objects, etc). Also, I find it helpful to do one on one time with each child as they are all at different levels.

So what do you do during circle time? I like the idea and want to have some kind of circle time.

[Zoe]

We sit "criss cross applesauce" with our legs and then slap our knees with our hands and sing an attendance song to the tune of Where is Thumbkin.

Example: Where is Sally, Where is Sally,
Did she come, did she come,
Come to daycare, come to daycare
Yes she did, there she is (then we point)

After the song, I put a chair up to my fun calendar and we talk about what day of the week it is, what day yesterday and tomorrow are, what number of the day it is, any season or holiday, etc...

After calendar, we either read a book based on our weekly theme, or do a finger play/song, or an activity based on the theme. I keep my circle time short to hold my littles' attention, but still cover enough learning to make the older ones happy.

Once we're done with our activity we go to the dining room table to do our craft.

[ammama]

My circle time is not a curriculum thing. We have our welcome songs that we do each time. Then we talk about anything interesting going on - our weekends, any multi-day projects (like hatching eggs in the incubator, growning bean plants etc) we have going on, the weather and season etc. Then we'll do more songs and fingerplays, including seasonal songs, stand up action songs, songs where we parade around the house, sometimes we'll get the drums out and beat on them while singing. When they (or I) have had enough, we do our closing song and verse.

I am trying to incorporate a story told from memory too, with puppets. Something that revolves around our theme/current season/project we have going etc.

[daycare]

our circle time starts criscross applesauce and every day with a morning hug to all and greeting. I will then ask does anyone know what today is?? we then sign the days of the week. when we get to the day of the week we shout, stomp, clap, or jump and then continue singing. then on to the calendar, we also stomp, clam, jump, bang on the floor # of days. We then put that number on the calendar.
since we are all up, we move into wiggle time. We come up with all kinds of ideas like pretend you are a firefighter and you have to save the cat from the tree. So we stand in place and pretend like we are climbing a ladder, use arms and legs. climb each step on the ladder using both of your feet and your arms/hands. becareful, dont fall off. Who can reach the cat, have the kids jump up to try to reach the cat. let the kids make cat sounds. Jump into another idea that will move the body...

While still standing its hokey pokey, learn left from right
still standing now its zoo phonic time

to wind down, we end with singing the abc, then twinkle twinkle little star with hand motions. it brings us back to sitting criss cross apple sauce. We then pretend to that it is night and the moon is out. We grab the moon and rock it to sleep (i have not a clue where we got this, but the kids love it) I lead them in singing rock a bye baby in the softest voice possible(wisper). we rock the moon and then set it in our laps very quietly. The kids love this, they sing to the pretend moon and hold on to it.... they don't let go of it... it is now time to read stories... we read 3 stories relating to our lessons. at the end of the stories, the kids throw the moon back up into the sky.... we then sign a release song allowing each child to be excused from the circle time. They then get a book to read solo while I set up our tables and centers......

sorry that was more than you wanted to know....
but this is what we do every day..in this order... when the kids get tired of one of the activities, we change it.....

[snbauser]

We open circle time with our hello song, then do our days of the week song, calendar, and then the weather. We review our letter(s), shape, color(s), and number(s) for the month. Then we talk about our theme that we are working on and what we may have learned so far about it. Our circle time is normally the last thing we do before we head outside to finish off the morning.

[kendallina]

I do a "morning meeting" when the children first come in and I do a circle time at the end of our morning.

For the morning meeting the children first come in where we talk about our day, the theme, what we'll be doing for small group. We'll usually sing a welcome song. I also have several games that I do that help them recognize their names or the colors. We sometimes will read a book that's correlates to our theme. We'll also do some charting or list-making that goes along with our theme (this week we made a list of what the daytime and nighttime skies look like).

After morning meeting we do our small group activity, which is where we're often at a table and we do messy art or gluing or whatever, often related to our theme.

At the end of our morning is our circle time and it's much more musically oriented. We sing songs, do fingerplays, dance, play games, talk about what we did that day (my circle time is at the end of the day), we often jump around and get silly . At the end of circle time we read stories.