Why Preschools Have Circle Time May 24
Nearly every preschool program that there is has a circle time. This is the time when the entire class sits together in one large circle and engages in a group activity. It’s a fun time and something which most kids look forward to during their preschool days. But why is that all preschools have this circle time? Basically, circle time allows teachers to better manage their classrooms and teach broad topics to a large number of kids while allowing children to learn important social skills in the classroom.
|
Preschool is a time when your child learns a lot of social skills by interacting with other children. There are two basic levels of development which happen to the child during the preschool ages. In one, the child enjoys playing in the presence of other children but not necessarily engaging in collaborative activities with them. In the next stage, children do enjoy actually playing and interacting with one another. Circle time allows preschools to engage children in social activities which offer opportunities for both kinds of play to the developing children. Circle time teaches kids to act appropriately in large groups, take turns with activities and focus on a teacher even though a lot of other kids are there so that they learn important skills they’ll need in kindergarten and beyond. |
Circle time also functions as a good teaching tool in the sense that it is a time when new topics can be introduced to everyone in the classroom at once, despite the fact that they might be at different stages of development. For example, the class might be learning about Thanksgiving and the teacher may have different activities related to that for the kids to do at their own pace. But the topic of Thanksgiving itself can be introduced to the whole class at circle time with stories or songs that tell about the holiday.
Circle time is also widely used in preschools because it allows teachers to get the entire class involved in one activity. As a general rule, this acts as a kind of crowd control so that the teacher can better engage all of the students. When preschool kids are broken up into smaller activities, the teacher has a more difficult time seeing what is going on with each child. In the circle, each child is easy to supervise.
The number of different activities which can take place during circle time is vast. There are worksheets and lesson plans galore for teachers of preschool classes to make use of. But the basics of all circle time are the same from lesson to lesson and preschool to preschool. Getting kids engaged in a big group circle allows them to learn necessary social skills while improving the teacher’s ability to teach the entire group all at once. That’s why there’s circle time!
Technorati Tags:circle time, preschool, activities, kids, children, education
