Why Preschools Have Circle Time

By TheNanny612 On May 24, 2007 · Leave a Comment

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