I just want to say this before we get started... I love watching the snow out the window right now. It's very snowy.. and pretty :] Ok, Ok, Ok.. let's get to it!
Something I Made Monday!!!
Circle Time Board
This is so much fun. Something I love to do and the children adore it. I learned a few tips and tricks while I was in high school volunteering for a club called "Future Teachers of America". I got to help out in a Kindergarten classroom and learned a lot myself.
Circle Time is a scheduled part of our day where we go over the calendar (the current day of the week, month, date, and year). We also do songs, the weather, Bible verse memorization, and read a Bible story during this time. Before we start, to let the children know it's time for Circle Time, I start singing a song I made up while doing day care, but it stuck with me.
Circle Time, Circle Time. Grab a mat and have a seat. It's Circle Time!! We repeat that a few times until everyone has grabbed a pillow off the couch and is sitting down.
How To:
The fun thing about this project is.. you can do WHATEVER you want! And you can make it HOWEVER you want! For ours, I used a
tri-fold presentation board from Hobby Lobby. It's very sturdy and folds up. When we're done, we fold it up and put it away. The end. The children know that our Circle Time board is not a toy, although it's very tempting because it's pretty fun! I'll go more in depth on how I made each section of the board below.
Here are some close-up photos along with descriptions of what we do and how we do it:
The calendar itself is made of a large piece of
poster board. I drew the lines on with a ruler and king size sharpie marker. Be sure to make enough squares for those few months where the calendar that hangs on your wall has to split the day to get both to fit in the space. Does that make sense? Anyway.. you have to make more than just 31 squares. There, how's that. I "laminated" the calendar with packaging tape. (Just an FYI.. I cover almost everything that I make that's going to be handled a lot with packaging tape. I don't have a laminating machine, and really have no desire to buy one, but this preserves our things for a long time.) Place a piece of
sticky back velcro on each calendar space AFTER you've laminated it. I like to put the rough, scratchy side on the board so the pieces that we actually touch have the soft side on the back. I printed out my days on the computer and cut them out into squares. I laminated those also. I use a star to show what day we're on that day (also laminated). You'll have to place velcro on the front and back of the star. It's just a helpful visual aid for children. Above the blue calendar I typed out all the days of the week and taped them on. I traced around the area where our month goes with the king size marker. There is velcro to hold our month in place as well.
These are all the months of the year. I cut them all out by hand on cardstock paper from my scrapbooking supplies. I tried to pick colors and themes that went with the month. January has snowflakes, November has leaves, etc. etc. These are also laminated and have a strip of soft velcro on the backsides. When we're talking about the months, we sing the song I learned to memorize them while I was in 1st grade. It goes to the tune of
Jingle Bells.
January, February, March, April, May! June, July, Au-gust, Sep-tem-ber, HEY! October, November, De--cem-ber. Those are the twelve months of the year that we need to know!! It works. Roen already has them memorized. Everything is always easier to remember if you can put it into a song!
This is how we learn what day of the week it is. We go across the board above the blue calendar and we say,
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sat-ur-Day. When we come to the star on the calendar, we know we're on the right day. So I'll stop when we get to that point and let the children answer what the day is. For each day of the week we say one of these:
Mountain, Monday starts with M. M makes the mmmm sound. Toe, Tuesday starts with T. T makes the tuh-tuh-tuh sound. We, Wednesday starts with W. W makes the wuh-wuh-wuh sound. Thunder, Thursday starts with T-H. T-H makes the thh-thh-thh sound. Fun, Friday starts with F. F makes the ffff-ffff-ffff sound. Silly, Saturday (Or Sunday) starts with S. S makes the ssssss sound. When we get to "Yesterday was:" we say, "Yesterday is the day BEFORE today." And I can point to the space BEFORE the yellow star on the calendar. For "Tomorrow will be:" we say, "Tomorrow is the day AFTER today." and point to the space AFTER today on the calendar.
These are all the days of the week. Once again, all cut out by hand and all laminated with packaging tape with soft sticky velcro on the backside.
This space changes every week. We try to memorize one hymn a week from our song book. This week we'll be working on
Nothing But the Blood of Jesus song #269. We also try to learn an easier song for Audrey. This week we'll be working on
Deep & Wide, one of Roen's favorites. This space is made of
Dry-Erase Paper. That's right!! You can get it at Hobby Lobby in the art department. I think I paid $1.99 or close to that for like 3 or 4 sheets. This one I cut because I didn't need a full sheet of the paper for this space. You can write on it with dry erase markers and erase it as often as you like. It's cool stuff. I used a sheet of cardstock to make a boarder around the dry erase paper.
To the tune of
Oh, My Darlin'.
What's the weather? What's the weather? What's the wea-ther, everyone? Is it windy? Is it cloudy? Is there rain? Or is there sun? Wave your hands in front of you like the wind is blowing, cover your eyes like it's cloudy, trickle your fingers down like it's raining, and circle your arms over your head like it's sunny. We look out the window and we see what the weather is doing outside that day. This day it is cloudy, snowy, and windy. After we put them on the board we like to say, "Hi, Cloudy! Hi, Snowy! Hi, Windy!" Just for fun ;]
These are all cut by hand, laminated, and velcroed.
These are our choices for weather: partly cloudy, snowy, windy, rainy, cloudy, and sunny. Am I forgetting anything?
In this section we write our current Bible verse that we're memorizing. We usually keep the same verse for two weeks because some are longer, some are shorter, and it usually takes Roen this long to fully get it memorized, along with the reference. Our verse is "I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you." The words of Jesus from John 14:18. This is also made of dry erase paper. I think I used a full sheet here.
This is our cute pointer that I picked up at Dollar Tree. I use it to point to things on the calendar. It's fun. :]
I have some empty space on our Circle Time board that I'd like to fill, I'm just not sure what to put there. Any suggestions? I hope everyone takes the time to make one of these. You can get as crazy or as simple as you'd like! But I believe your children will really benefit from it, and it's a really fun way to learn basic things that they'll need to know for school. You can do like I did and add your own extra learning bits in there. Whatever you believe to be necessary and valuable to your child's education. It takes us about 30 minutes to get through everything. We have this scheduled into our day. I hope you'll schedule it into yours!! :-D
No comments:
Post a Comment