circle time and the book mobile

After breakfast and all of our chores are done we start our school day with "circle time", I started this in Florida but it was just on the couch with Miss E and Mr R reading the Bible and working on Miss E's Cubbies verses, it has evolved since then.

For now Miss J is still taking a morning nap, we do circle time while she is napping, but in the

next month or so I think I'm going to have her start joining us. Here is a cute picture she asked me to take of her with her blanket after it came out of the wash (yes, she brought me the camera and then sat down with her blanket!)

Each of the kids has their own carpet square that they pull out for circle time, the little wooden crate on the couch holds all of our circle time things, it is normally stored in the coffee table shelf. Everyone looks forward to circle time, its fun, but we do quite a bit of learning too! They each have a day that they get to lead prayer and choose songs. This is how our circle time generally goes:

Singing- we just sing a few songs, this is a chance to sing the songs that we don't do before bed time (Father Abraham, and I'm in the Lords Army just get a bit too crazy then)

Prayer- We do the ACTS prayer Affirmation, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication going around in the circle each has a turn to pray.

AWANA- This is my time to work with the younger kids on their verses (the non-readers), and then listen to the big kids recite their verses. In the summer when we are not working on AWANA work we go through some great books by Susan Hunt. This summer was "Discovering Jesus in Genesis", we've used two of her other books, and next year we are looking forward to going through "Discovering Jesus in Exodus".

Flash cards- We rotate through a few sets of flash cards. This year we are working on Landmarks (world wide), Presidents of the US, animals/insects, and space

Rotating subject- we will be rotating through the subjects of geography (continents/oceans and states), grammar, and art appreciation. These subjects and the flash cards will be covered multiple times through the year. We'll just focus on them for a week or two at a time and then move on to the next one.

History- We enjoy history, mostly because we've been blessed to find great books that tell the wonderful stories of our history instead of just dry text books. This year we are focusing on US and California history. We found a local historian at our home schooling convention that has written several books on California state history for children as well as activities to go along with them (and reading lists for supplemental reading). I read these books out loud to all of the kids.

Often there are work sheets, crafts or something to go along with at least one of the things covered during circle time, we do those things during "table time".

On Wednesdays the book mobile comes to our community center, so I walk down there with the kids after lunch. It is great since it is like a mini library right down the street! The kids choose a book or two each time and I can request anything that the main library has and just pick it up there! We all love going to the book mobile!