School Year 2010-2011: Circle Time
Yeah, I’ll just stick with Circle Time. Sorry for the momentary angst. :) We might not keep to a tidy circle, but the term is fairly widely used in the circles I keep, so we’ll stick to the commonly used terminology.
Background
“Circle Time” is the time we do our all-together things, toddler included. A two-year-old singing For All the Saints while playing kitchen is priceless. Kendra and Cindy are the ones who introduced me to this concept.
“One of the most important things about Circle Time is that it causes us to be faithful in prayer together every morning. It is also a time I can gather the littlest ones in close and communicate to them that I want them there, and even if I am busy with the older ones and school, I want them there.”
“So you probably imagine me doing all the things I think are important along with all the things you think are important but that isn’t how it works. Have you ever been in a group of homeschooling mothers and listened to the conversation and come away feeling like you were failing in 6 different areas? We all want to be the composite supermom and we project that onto women we admire. “Our morning time has become a way for me to fit in the things that would slip between the cracks. As an added benefit, it promotes a family culture and leads to daily family worldview discussions. It also squeezes out some other things that I also think are important but not important enough to give up the benefits I have described.”
“Approximately 20 years ago as a result of my early home school adventures and the reading of For the Children’s Sake (Susan Schaeffer Macaulay) followed by The Original Home school Series by Charlotte Mason, I began a morning meeting with my children as a way to incorporate subjects that were important to me but easily lost in the shuffle of conventional schooling.”
Agenda
- Pray (everyone may have a turn)
- Sing (one hymn or psalm per turn, one review hymn or psalm, and the Doxology or Gloria Patri)
- Recite a creed (usually the Apostle’s, later in the year we’ll learn the Nicene; this is our pledge of allegiance)
- Manners
- Repeat memory work (we don’t do all of this every day, some is only weekly or twice a week)
- Catechism for Young Children or select Heidelberg Q&As
- 1 Psalm over the course of two terms
- 1 Scripture passage
- review several previously learned Psalms and passages
- Presidents
- States
- Bible knowledge song (1 per term)
- Grammar chants
- Math facts songs
- Bible
My estimate is that this takes 30-45 minutes. Singing is 5-8 minutes, memory work is 8-10, manners is 5, Bible is 10-15, and wrangling & managing is 5-10. That’s not on the list because it’s constant.
Resources
I found a song for the presidents on YouTube that we’ll use to memorize them. None were updated to include Obama, so we have to tag that on the end ourselves. The boys enjoy that because they think Obama is a funny name to say.
For the states, I’m using the Geography Songs selections and we’ll do one section (Eastern border, Northern border, etc.) each term.
The Bible songs will be a Book of the Bible song or a Jamie Soles list song (like Apostles or Kings or Prophets).
I decided not to do formal grammar this year, but instead we’ll learn the Shurley grammar chants (I bought the CD only) and we’ll check out Ruth Heller’s books from the library. With these helps, we’ll do a “as you walk along the way” approach to grammar, since I’m comfortable and familiar with the terminology and concepts.
The math facts songs are from Math-U-See.
I bought Manners Made Easy for the Family
For Bible we’re continuing with Covenantal Catechism, but we’ll do both Book 2: Genesis through II Samuel and Book 3: I Kings to Malachi
You are an inspiration, Mystie! Thanks for writing this all down – it gives me ideas and does the “footwork” for me ahead of time. Maybe someday you can turn this blog into a business! :-)