21 replies to this topic

[Linda McDowell]

Have you seen the book by Jenny Mosley and Helen Sonnet called Here we go round? It is circle time activities for 3-5 year olds and has some really nice ones for being kind and sharing. We do one from it with two puppets or soft toys. We have a little pile of toys which one won't share with the other-so the other is crying. We talk about why the toy is crying and whether it is fair etc. not to share toys. We encourage the children to do the talking. They then suggest remedies for this dilemma.
We also do this for being kind, not hitting etc. especially when we are having a bad couple of days!!
Hope this helps
Linda

[Linda McDowell]

Forgot to mention that we have two very small soft toys which are ideal for little hands. It encourages the children to be gentle with them. These are the two we tend to use for circle time, one is a leopard called Leyla and the other a puppy called Paws. Because we use them all the time the children relate to them really well-all except one bright spark who keeps reminding us that they are not real!!!!! Leyla came with a book called Helping young children listen by Ros Bayley and Lynn Broadbent. Theirs is called Lola in the book but you could name it in the class. Ross Bayley also has a book called Storylines which is basically moral dilemmas with puppets. It calls on the children to think of solutions to everyday problems they face, like sharing, being unkind etc.
Linda

[Steve]

Hi Jill -
Don't know if you found the little circle time article we did a long time ago and the associated forum? You can find them here. Just general ideas, but they may help!

Steve.

[Linda McDowell]

You are right Jill. That is the best thing about this site. Everybody who posts here can give some ideas and take some away. I think it is one of the best communities I have found on the web. Long may it continue!!!
Linda

[Susan]

Hi Jill,
I also use the "Mery go round " book Linda mentioned in Reception, it has some excellent ideas.

Linda, is the Ros Bayley book worth going for?

Susan

[H]

Susan

We also purchased the Ros Bayley books after an inspiring day with her at an Early Years Conference and they are great - she has loads of other stuff as well but Lola is a big hit with my class - we used her today after a particulary 'silly' afternoon and it worked a treat!!!!

Sarah

[Linda McDowell]

As Sarah said the Ros Bayley books are very good with great ideas you can use directly or adapt. The only problem I had was getting hold of them-they took ages!! I ordered them from amazon and they took a long time to get here. Perhaps if you went to a bookstore they would be more easily available. The ISBN numbers are
Helping young children to listen 1-903670-04-7
Storylines 1-903670-06-3

The listening one is very useful as I find this is a skill a lot of our children find very difficult-bearing in mind that they are very young. One activity we did last week was they had to hand round a blown up balloon without tossing it into the air. My staff were amazed at how well they did. We used Paws and Leyla and told them that they were going to watch and they were all keen to impress. They are very simple instructions they have to follow and we find the soft toys give them a focus.
Linda

[mundia]

Susan the Ros bayley books are definately worth going for. We were very lucky that we got a free copy along with Lola.I think they are available from 'Lawrence Educational publishers' or something like that. I'm sure there was an order form in the Feb issue of Early years Educator (in which Ros Bayley wrote about beat competancy). Its the same publisher.

[glmaidment]

I have a set of hand puppets with different expressions on their faces and a descriptive word on their backs I.e. happy, sad, angry, surprised etc (from one of the Early Years catalogues). These provoke much discussion in circle time - Why is she sad? Why is he angry? We also give them names - Hannah Happy, Sophie Sad.

Gail