Colorful inspiration for your circle time routine
I am so blessed each day by the folks over at Teach Preschool on Facebook! They are always giving me great ideas and when I hear of something really cool, I like to try it out. A few months ago, we were sharing ideas for sitting in circle time and among the many wonderful ideas, this one really stood out as super fun…
What you will Need
I purchased a set of these colorful place mats from Target. They were actually sold individually but I loved them because of the solid colors and the material they were made from. I don’t know what you call this material but it reminds me of the mats you use under carpets to keep them from slipping. I bought red, blue, purple, green, orange, and yellow (way more than I actually needed)…
Choosing a Colorful Spot
The idea is to keep the spots close to your circle time area and when you are ready for circle time to begin, you can say “Grab a Spot!” and invite the children to join you for circle time. Each child gets to sit on their own spot. Wy and I tried them out the other day and he loved sitting on the orange spot and the yellow spot…
And the purple spot…
And the green spot..
And the red spot…
Ways to use the Spots
Well you get the idea. When you are currently the only child in the room, you can choose any spot you like! The spots (placemats) are very light in weight so Wy was easily able to be a “Spot Helper” too. The spot helper can help pick up the spots or set them out. If the spots are already set out then you might want to change it up and say, “Choose a Spot” for the children to sit on.
Depending on the group of children, you would have to see whether “grabbing a spot” (letting the children pick their own spot and set it in the circle) or “choosing a spot” (putting the spots out ahead of time for the children to sit on) works better for you…
I don’t know if Target still has this particular line of placemats but any color of placemats should do nicely. However, I do like the fact that these placemats don’t slip around on the floor. Now if you like this idea – go pick yourself up some spots! And if you needed one more “helping job”, add the Spot Helper to the list:)
