CIRCLE:
'OK, its time for Circle!' or 'Find your circle chair and sit down' are
common directions we give our students to indicate it is time for 'circle', a
place your child has called their own. This is a comfort place, a transition
place and a cognitively stimulating place! We will often use this space of
our classroom as our gathering place to go over our classroom rules
concretely by role playing a difficult concept such as keeping 'hands down'
for example, we will sing the song 'open shut them' to make it playful yet
practicing the expectation for all students. Moreover, we may discuss a
general classroom problem that needs a solution by brainstorming together
such as 'Due to the fire drill, we only have 15 minutes left to play, should
we go outside to the playground or play in centers?'.
Each child has their own chair with their name and picture to sit and
place their special items such as Show & Tell or transition toy from home
under. We use this space for 'circle time', 'centers' and 'roundup', along
with transitions to regroup (from Art to Snack) or 'time away' to calm down
by reading a book.
In 'circle time', we break it up into 5 sections to cater to our short
attention spans at age three.
*First we start with 'Attendance' where each child uses their handprint
tracing that was made at the start of the year to indicate their job for the
day and place them on 'Miss Hane's Helping Hands Train'. The jobs of the
classroom include: line leader, attendance helper, messeger, room hunter,
door holder, wipe tables, gardener and caboose.
*Next we read a 'story' using books, props, pictures, flannelboard, go over
the process of a skill (making oatmeal), review concepts (prepositions)
related to the theme.
*Then we 'stretch' to break up the sitting by touching the sky, touching our
toes, twist, turn, jump, clap and sing songs or play a game such as Shake
your sillies out, Simon says, Head shoulders knees and toes. (Stretch may be
switched to before attendance if circle is after a long seated activity such
as group speech).
*Then we sing a song, poem or fingerplay related to a theme or by popular
demand ('Firetruck')!
*Lastly, we will check the 'weather' by seeing if our weather bear is wearing
the correct clothing to play on the playground. We sing the song 'Look out
the window and what do you see?', move the arrows on the weather chart while
singing 'Whats the weather like today?' and change the weather bears' clothes
as needed.
In 'centers', we will together pick three centers that we want to play
with. Each child will use their 'center stick' to place on their chosen
center. They go to that center for at least 5 minutes and if they want to
switch, they need to come back to circle and move their center stick to the
new center. This increases time on task and makes moving to another center
more concrete and decreases flitting by creating a beginning/ middle and end
to their play.
In 'roundup', to signify it is the end of the session and time to go
home, we sit in circle to summarize our day together. We listen to hear if
we are all on GREEN and if we got a HEART (see 'Behavior Color Chart' and
Random Acts of Kindness' pages for details). Each child gets a color sticker
in their communication notebook and a sticker if a heart was earned. We
lastly sing the 'Chickadee song' and dismiss from circle by flying away to
pack our backpacks and go home.
CENTERS:
Daily, our class will play in 'Centers' where we can choose from a
choice of three centers that are 'open' (where everything else in the
classroom is 'closed'). We will use a 'center stick' that we designed at the
start of the school year to be used to indicate our choice. This will
promote turn taking, sharing, cooperative play, time on task, construction,
creativity, critical thinking and wonder through open ended child centered
play!
Centers include (but not limited to):
Kitchen, sand, dressup, water table, art, musical instruments, blocks, cars
in the garage, sand table, books, stuffed animals, trains, people figures in
the school house, trucks, animal figures in the farm house, puzzles,
playdough, legos, dolls, puppets, tool bench, playdough, computer and
rotating sensory table (rice, bubble wrap, packing peanuts, goop, shaving
cream).
We would LOVE to have parents come in to volunteer and play with our class
during centers after the New Year. This would give your child a chance to
acclimate to the classroom routine and to allow Miss Hane more one on one
direct teaching time with each child. A rotating schedule will be developed
by our 'Centers Parent' so that all interested parents can have a turn to
PLAY!
-Miss Hane
