The Best Part of Our Day: Homeschool Circle Time {Printable Resources}
Each morning, my kiddos and I start our homeschool day the same way. As soon as breakfast is finished, we gather for homeschool circle time.
Circle time doesn’t have to be like the kid they do in public schools (although we do pull from what I like about the morning meeting routine). For our family, circle time is simply a way for us to come together, learn as a family, and start the day with good attitudes.
Our routine is pretty simple:
We sing songs. Many times, we sing as we clean up from breakfast. Anything from nursery rhymes, songs in Spanish, the day of the week song, songs from musicals, and christmas carols are fair game. We just like to sing!
We look at the calendar. One of the most important things we do is look at the date. Calendar time also covers many basic math skills. We talk about yesterday, today, and tomorrow. We guess what comes next in a pattern. We count how many days until the next holiday. I make my own calendar cards to fit all of these things in, and many sets I give away free, so head over to Teachers Pay Teachers to grab a set!
We talk about the weather. My 5 year old is still in the “I want to wear shorts everyday” phase. Each morning, it’s his job to look out the window and determine the weather. He changes the marker on our weather board, and then we add today’s weather to our graph.
We practice reading the clock. I set the clock each morning to an arbitrary time, and the boys “race” to see who can read it correctly first.
We review vocabulary and spelling words. I rotate which words I feature in the pocket chart where we do our morning meeting.
We recite poems. Morning meeting time is the perfect time to review memory work. Sometimes, we use a seasonal poem, other times we practice memorizing patriotic songs or other important things.
We appreciate art. I like to hang up a famous piece of artwork to look at. We talk about the style of art, who painted it, and what we like about it.
We plan the rest of our day. Morning meeting time is when I go over what we need to do for the day. Maybe we have appointments we need to get to, or there is a fun project in our plans. This is a good time to get excited about the day!
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I don’t do all of these things every day, and I don’t change the resources more than once every week or two. It’s a fun, simple way to fit in a lot of learning without very much work!
If you want to set up a circle time routine with your kids, you can grab many of the resources shown here in our shop.
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