Circle Time?

[mommy13]

I will be homeschooling my 1st grader. Do any of ya'll do a morning "circle time" routine? Such as calender time, pledge ect. If so I would love to know your routine and how long it last.

[Lillian J]

We generally just snuggled together under a quilt first thing in the morning while I read a story. We didn't have a school form to our days - we just went about our activities, and much of it happened to deal with learning. Lillian

[mama-aya]

We take a little walk, observe the neighborhood and talk, then come in and start circle. We light a special candle, then between opening verse and closing verse, which rarely change, there are two or three finger/body movement verses, a bible verse, a folksong, a hymn, and a seasonal song, not in that order. This changes approximately monthly, in part if not whole.
We do not pledge allegiance or do calendar time.
Calendar is incorporated at the end of the day when they color in the day's leaf on he weather tree.

[pageta]

I read a chapter out of a chapter book we're doing. When I was in grade school, our teachers would read to us from a book for the first fifteen minutes every day. I don't follow it with prayer or the pledge of aliegance or anything, but it does signify a beginning to our routine.

[BeanyMama]

Originally Posted by mama-aya

We take a little walk, observe the neighborhood and talk, then come in and start circle. We light a special candle, then between opening verse and closing verse, which rarely change, there are two or three finger/body movement verses, a bible verse, a folksong, a hymn, and a seasonal song, not in that order. This changes approximately monthly, in part if not whole.
We do not pledge allegiance or do calendar time.
Calendar is incorporated at the end of the day when they color in the day's leaf on he weather tree.

I love this! We also take a morning walk and talk, I'm going to aim to incorporate some of your "circle time" ideas! Danke!

[craft_media_hero]

This is what we've been doing:

casually examine calendar- 2 minutes
sing our days of the week song (Eric Carle, "Today is Monday" book)- 1-2 min
count, skip count- 2
fingerplays and ABCs in sign language- 2-3 min
very short sign language/spanish of the week- 2-5 min
short recorder practice and read our Usborne recorder book- 5 maybe 10 minutes
recite our poem for the week (one verse of Alice Walker's "Flower at the Tip of My Nose")
Then we read our affirmations book (Connie Bowen, "I Believe in Me")
quiet breathing time/meditation before starting work in our handmade MLB

The affirmations book relates to our Main Lesson Block that we're doing right now which is a self-affirming autobiography, so that book may change, but the reading has been working as a transition from Circle to Main Lesson time.

I guess that's kind of a long circle time, but it sets us up for everything else that we're doing throughout the day.

---Oh, she is 1st grade and 6yo in August---