Circle Time

In an effort to give us a better routine, and let’s face it, to help me be more motivated to actually do Tot School with my kids, we’ve started doing Circle Time each morning.  The kids are loving it!

We start with a fun song like “Do as I’m Doing”, “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”, or “Old McDonald” and/or a finger play, and then have a prayer.  I am looking for a Bible or Book of Mormon picture book that we can read a story from following our prayer.  I have one in mind but any suggestions would be much appreciated!

We then do our calendar
I got this pocket calendar from Oriental Trading.
Adam counts up to the current date and then finds the number from the cards I put on the bottom row.  I’m hoping this will help him learn to count past 12 (he currently gets to 12 and then inserts random ‘teen’ numbers)

Then we do our Morning Board.  I got the idea and printables from 1+1+1=1 and Confessions of a Homeschooler.  I used a foam board and removeable adhesive squares to mount the laminated pieces and then used rings for the top 2 pieces so I could flip them over to save space (great idea from Carisa at 1+1+1=1!)

Here is a close-up of the first 2 pages.  We sing songs for all of these and Adam changes out the day of the week card.  He has loved learning these songs!

The other pages hiding underneath the top ones.
We don’t sing the month song every day, maybe just twice a week or so.

This is Adam’s favorite part…the weather!  He hops up on his bed to look out his window and then sticks up the corresponding card.  By the way, the card pieces are stuck on with velcro circles.

On the bottom I have a sheet protector that I trimmed down a little and filled with the Primary songs for this year.  We sing this one song every day and will keep at it until I feel he has really mastered the song and then I’ll switch it to the next one.  I want my kids to really know these wonderful songs and to build their testimonies from them.  Plus, he’ll be the kid in the Primary program blurting out every song from heart!
(and he has pretty good pitch for a 3 year old boy if I do say so myself!) :)

So there you have it!  This only takes us about 5 minutes and then we’re off to do whatever I have (or don’t have) planned for Tot School.  Once I get a scripture stories book, it’ll take a few more minutes but I can’t think of a better way to start our day!