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Circle Time Resources-HELP!


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I keep hearing about families (especially larger ones) doing circle time. We haven't done it yet but I'd like to get something going for next year. My kids will be in 4th, 3rd, K, Pre-K, and the 3 year old. We are Catholic too so resources about Saints/etc. would be great.

 

But Mostly, I'm just looking for something to "center" us...start the day with a positive note. Character ed type things or religious things welcome. I also love singing and music so that would be welcome. Can you recommend any outstanding resources that sound like they might fit us? Thanks!

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I accidentally clicked on this post. I should not be here. We are at the beginning of our HS journey. (Our oldest is 5.5.)

But we are Catholic. And lately I have been drooling over Making Music Praying Twice. Other than that, for religion for all I'd just get a saint book and read from it.  You may also like using a variety of things from here. We are about to start using "The Life on Earth of our Blessed Lord for Little Children" in our morning time. Someday I hope to use the catechism in rhyme one too.

Really, for our morning time so far, I have a bunch of books in a basket. Each day each kid picks one and we read something from it. We have various Aesop's fables collections, storybook Bibles, books about saints, Childcraft encyclopedias and more. 

It isn't fancy but it works for us for now.

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I'm not Catholic but I can tell you how we start our day. I sort of have a morning basket. We do some bible verse memory work using the SCM method. Then sing a couple songs, usually a hymn or two and a song the kids pick (it could be anything but usually a preschool type song). Then we do reading, it's not the same thing everyday but it could be a picture book or two, a short devotional, a chapter from our current read aloud, or a chapter from SOTW. I spend anywhere from 15-30 minutes reading at this time.

 

I do this downstairs right after breakfast then we head upstairs to do schoolwork and my youngest plays. He generally sits in in this but may also play in the living room.

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Not Catholic, but I can share what we use...

 

Bible story- Egermeiers Bible story book

Bible summary cards from Bible Study Guide for all Ages (for preschool/ K years we used their beginner timeline instead)

Old Testament and New Testament books to songs

We choose virtues (character cards)

Megaverses (scripture memory to song)

 

We then do poetry memorization as well...

 

This is our first year doing a "morning basket" time and we are loving it...we finish it out with our current read aloud...

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In case you are interested in a variety of topics/activities for circle time in addition to devotions and religious studies, these past threads had some SUPER suggestions:

 

 

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I have an old missalette from a few years ago (after my parish had gotten the ones in for the new year, they offered the old ones to the congregation). I pick out a hymn/song every two weeks or so that we practice every morning. Each time we have one verse nailed down, I teach the next one. Your kids are a little older than mine, so you might get a book for each of your readers.

 

I also have a Magnificat subscription for myself and do a modified morning prayer with the kids from that. It's only the opening prayer, the reading, the intercessions, the Our Father and the closing prayer. The kids say the Our Father with me, the Glory Be when it pops up, and I help them recite the Responsorial during the Intercessions.

 

After that (depending on the two year old) I might read from a chapter book, a science/history picture book, Life of Fred, or Our Heavenly Father (the Faith and Life text for 1st grade) depending on the day.

 

We do also have a prek calendar, but that stays in DS6's room so the toddler doesn't destroy it. I g over the new month with them once a month and make cards for what our family is doing with index cards.

 

Many other people do poetry reading and/or memorization, bible verse memorization and things like that. I eventually want to add a SQUILT session for music appreciation, maybe next school year.

 

HTH!

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I try to keep our circle time to less than 30 minutes.  We begin by going through our memory work, a combination of poems to memorize, grammar facts, the Pledge of Allegiance, bird and flower identification, painting and painter identification (with Memoria Press Art Cards), etc.  Then we read a Bible story, sometimes I read and other times my daughter wants to read from her New Catholic Picture Bible.  On Fridays we will read a saint story instead of a Bible story and I have been going through the book Saints: Lives and Illuminations by Ruth Sanderson.  Then we read either a Greek Myth (soon moving on to Norse myths) or from the Famous Men of the Middle Ages since that is the time period we are currently studying.

 

I would like to add in some French language lessons and reading from the Baltimore Catechism, but it just hasn't worked it's way in yet.  I certainly enjoy our circle time and my children have retained lots of information by doing this.  Good luck in finding out what works for your family! 

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Thanks everyone for the inspiring resources and information! I can see this is going to take a bit of research and planning to gather materials that I want to use. It seems circle time looks so different for everybody, so I guess I'll just have to see what floats our boat. Thank you again.

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Thanks everyone for the inspiring resources and information! I can see this is going to take a bit of research and planning to gather materials that I want to use. It seems circle time looks so different for everybody, so I guess I'll just have to see what floats our boat. Thank you again.

Yes! And start small. I had to realize, after trying too much at first, that these mamas that I admired so much had been doing circle time/morning basket for years. It builds.

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I can share my routine, with 3 students plus a gaggle of toddlers and preschoolers and a baby. :)
 

We begin with a bible story from our preferred children's bible. Then a prayer or two, and we sing a hymn. Then we do scripture memory and quick catechism (just 2 questions a week). Next is poetry memory and a quick geography review. Each of these is very short. The geography is just labelling a map of a continent (we do one continent every 2 months or so), then I quiz them for a minute on "where's France" or "if I went to Portugal and then went straight south, where would I be?" Very easy. For scripture, I don't use an elaborate system, I just pick 3 or so longish verses and we recite them every day until we know them. Poetry we use Linguistic Development through Poetry, and it's super easy. My kids were not amazing memorizers, but they are doing great with steady repetition. We also do Artist study, Composer study, Logic, and a social studies read aloud EACH once a week. In addition we cycle in other things seasonally or as we are interested. Right now we are studying Taming of the Shrew, so we have scaled back the art and music for a month or so. It's pretty loose, I can scale it way back to just a hymn and prayer and read aloud, or we can go full throttle. At max, it takes around 75 minutes, minimum 10. It's a great flexible time to fit in stuff that really makes homeschooling feel different, and has done a ton to improve relationships, attitude, and warmth in our school. Start small with maybe just singing 1 song a week, recite a quick poem, and a read aloud. Anything that is routine and has you all together, invested in something beautiful. :)

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I can share my routine, with 3 students plus a gaggle of toddlers and preschoolers and a baby. :)

 

We begin with a bible story from our preferred children's bible. Then a prayer or two, and we sing a hymn. Then we do scripture memory and quick catechism (just 2 questions a week). Next is poetry memory and a quick geography review. Each of these is very short. The geography is just labelling a map of a continent (we do one continent every 2 months or so), then I quiz them for a minute on "where's France" or "if I went to Portugal and then went straight south, where would I be?" Very easy. For scripture, I don't use an elaborate system, I just pick 3 or so longish verses and we recite them every day until we know them. Poetry we use Linguistic Development through Poetry, and it's super easy. My kids were not amazing memorizers, but they are doing great with steady repetition. We also do Artist study, Composer study, Logic, and a social studies read aloud EACH once a week. In addition we cycle in other things seasonally or as we are interested. Right now we are studying Taming of the Shrew, so we have scaled back the art and music for a month or so. It's pretty loose, I can scale it way back to just a hymn and prayer and read aloud, or we can go full throttle. At max, it takes around 75 minutes, minimum 10. It's a great flexible time to fit in stuff that really makes homeschooling feel different, and has done a ton to improve relationships, attitude, and warmth in our school. Start small with maybe just singing 1 song a week, recite a quick poem, and a read aloud. Anything that is routine and has you all together, invested in something beautiful. :)

I think you nailed what I'm looking for-warmth and relationship. It's what's lacking around here.

 

What do you use specifically for artist/composer study? Thanks for your detailed response!

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We do a gratitude journal in which we all write down 3 things we are thankful for from the day before or the weekend before on a Sunday (our weekends here are Friday and Saturday.)

 

We also do a yoga story and midline exercises.

 

And my middle one does finger and hand strengthening exercises during the read aloud portions.

 

The rest is just a read aloud, poetry, some memory work and a couple of songs for my 4 year old.

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For composer I use Squilt. We use it over a couple of weeks and it's pretty relaxed. For composer I bought those Great Composers for Kids books from Amazon and we read about half the book, look up pictures on the Internet (sometimes I print them nicely) and do some basic picture study. Then I Pinterest an art activity related to the artist and we do it at a separate time.

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I'm always right on the verge of instituting circle time... LOLOLOL!!!

 

Some Catholic resources that look super-cool:  

- timeline cards from Classic Catholic Memory.  In fact, you could just get the full CCM program and call it good.  :-)  

- Baltimore Cat. for memory work.  Much more engaging than the newer CCC

 

Other neat stuff...

- Classics for Kids CDs.  These are really fun.  I found the Christmas one to be very appropriate for Catholics, without actually being Catholic (as far as I know).  The Bach CD also touches on Catholicism in a very appropriate way, so they are very Catholic-sensitive if not actually Catholic.  :-)

- Pircure Portfolios from Simply Charlotte Mason 

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We do a gratitude journal in which we all write down 3 things we are thankful for from the day before or the weekend before on a Sunday (our weekends here are Friday and Saturday.)

 

We also do a yoga story and midline exercises.

 

And my middle one does finger and hand strengthening exercises during the read aloud portions.

 

The rest is just a read aloud, poetry, some memory work and a couple of songs for my 4 year old.

I like the idea of the gratitude journal! I going to copy that.
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We do a gratitude journal in which we all write down 3 things we are thankful for from the day before or the weekend before on a Sunday (our weekends here are Friday and Saturday.)

 

We also do a yoga story and midline exercises.

 

And my middle one does finger and hand strengthening exercises during the read aloud portions.

 

The rest is just a read aloud, poetry, some memory work and a couple of songs for my 4 year old.

 

What do you use for yoga and midline exercises? Also what type of finger and hand exercises do you use?

Edited by lolo
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Im not Catholic but we morning Morning Time here. :) We learn one hymn a month so we sing that every day. Then we read out of our Bible story book and after that we work on our Children's Catechism. We have an album we listen to that goes along with it (Ask Me Whooo if anyone is interested, it's on Spotify). Then we go over our Scripture memory verses. Right now we are learning the books of the Bible, several passages, and a few for church. We try to learn a poem per month, too, so we'll read that together. After that we might do a picture book or chapter book read aloud, depending on how fidgety they are. Only takes us about 20 mins but it packs a powerful punch. Before bed at night we go over Long Story Short.

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