Circle Time Fun

So, I'm a bit lazy with the blog lately. That's probably because I'm trying to squeeze in my on-line course work during nap and in the evening. I love the new ideas I'm getting exposure to - but my goodness, it is a time-drainer! So, lazy woman that I am, here is from today's Daily Report and some extra added in with pictures and a video (TADA!) from Circle this morning:

Circle was really fun today. We started off with "Here We Are Together", "The Days of the Week", and the "ABC Song". We went over all our Nursery Rhymes from our Theme Page too. Then we read Skippyjon Jones up & down and Skippyjon Jones shape up – for the opposites book we have our own “acting out” movements we do and for the shape book we talked about the colors of the shapes and we tried to find similar shapes in our Circle Room as we read. We read Barnyard Banter – which I videoed with my digital camera and hope to have as my first “video” on our blog.

I know, I know. She bumped her head and I did not offer too much comfort. I was trying to stay out of the shot AND kept the story going! She shook it off fine, that Sunshine is quite a Little Trooper.

I played the video back and they watched it (very giggly) on the little screen on the camera. Baby Cakes was on the floor on her tummy up to this point when we switched to the Bumbo.

Then I got out some activities: Building/Nesting Blocks & Counting Chips, Building/Nesting Blocks & Counting Fish, and the Feeling Bear Puzzle. We rotated around the items. Well, except for Little who was very content with her just a set of blocks – happy to count the blocks themselves and build towers with secret hiding places for smaller blocks (Maybe we have a little engineer in the making here?).

What you can't see in this picture is how smart this almost two-year old is. She has awesome organizational skills. This is a set of 10 boxes. She had been stacking them while hiding a smaller tower of two inside of one big cube, then upward with another tower of two inside one big cube. This was toward the end of Circle when she was cleaning up her blocks - don't interrupt her - she can do it herself!

Baby Cakes got into the activity action in Circle today too – Sweetie Pie shared with Baby Cakes and they played with blocks together!

One is never too young to enjoy a good Circle Time. Above is Sweetie Pie showing Baby Cakes the ropes, such a Good Friend.

And here is Sunshine in a Sunbeam (the Circle Room is FULL of sunbeams) showing me a "Sad Feeling Bear" she told me that the bear got a boo-boo on her knee. Then she showed me her Weekend Warrior boo-booed knee.

And here is Mr. Smiley. I know that few of his pictures show him smiling, but I promise he is a smiler! Here he is concentrating on the task of seeing just how many counting chips he can hold in his little 21-month-old hands.

I think the Circle Room was one of my best ideas ever for our day care. These kids LOVE Circle Time. I'll send up the two-minute warning that we need to do our morning clean-up so we can go to Circle and they just scurry around putting away all the toys. As soon as I get the gate open - they rush out like a herd of little ponies hollering "Circle Time, circle time!" and running to the Circle Room.