Creating a Nursery Circle Time Routine That Works

INTRO

Creating a nursery circle time routine that works

If you work in a nursery or preschool and you want to give your circle time a bit more excitement.

Maybe your circle time has got a bit stale and you want more engagement from children.

Then stick around because in this video we will be going over how you can create a circle time routine that really works.

But first welcome to the channel.

INTRO VID

Welcome to the channel open a nursery with myself Curtly Ania where I support you to open run and grow your own childcare business.

If this is your first time here make sure to check out the channel I post regular videos all around the topic of childcare from what is a Montessori nursery to what is county lines.

There is a lot on this channel to support you with your childcare career.

One of the biggest struggles as early years practitioners is to get children to sit and pay attention during circle time.

We try our hardest.

From over the top actions to stories to putting on our best most dramatic signing voices.

Sometimes it can feel like nothing we can do will work.

Sometimes our children would prefer to play with their nappies, read their own book or want to just wander off.

Everything else except be actually involved with the circle time.

But what do we do.

Most of the time we end up repeating the process the next day expecting or hoping for a different result.

This may work eventually, we may wear our children down long enough that they decide they will eventually just sit down and participate in our circle.

But today I want to propose a different way, potentially a better way.

So, that you can have a nursery circle time routine that actually works.

So, how can we improve our circle times?

Understand our children’s attention span

Firstly, we need to understand the attention spans of the children we are doing the circle time for.

You may be surprised to know what the average attention span of the children we care for is.

According to www.happiestbaby.com generally speaking, children can pay attention for 2 to 3 minutes per age they are.

So, a 2 year old would have an attention span of roughly 4 to 6 mins, a 3 year 6 to 8 minutes and a four year old would be able to pay attention for roughly 8 to 12 minutes.

This means, most toddlers can play on their own for short periods of time, but they require support and encouragement from a grownup to stick with an activity for longer.

So, compare this to how long your circle time is right now.

By the time we’ve rounded up all are children, got all the resources we need together and finally begun our circle time many of us would have already exceeded the average attention span of our children.

And then we want our children to sit for an extended period after this.

All people including adults can only focus on a task for period of time before we start to lose focus.

And this period for our children is very short, yet most of our circle times don’t reflect this.

Usually going on for much longer.

Three-year-olds are said to only be able to focus for 6 to 8 minutes.

Two-year-olds for 4 to 6 minutes.

Yet, most of our circle times aren’t fully adapted to this.

We should be adjusting our circle time lengths for the age group of the children that we have.

Use more active learning

The second thing we need to do to make our circle time better is to have a good balance between children being active and them being passive.

So, what does this mean?

Passive parts of your circle time involve children sitting and listening to you or their peers. So, this could be when you are reading children a story. As generally, children will just be sitting and listening to you read.

Naturally, this makes it difficult for children to stay focused.

Which is why, when choosing stories, it is best to choose stories that involve audience participation or encourages you to read them loudly or dramatically.

To help boost engagement with children.

When children are involved in passive education or learning they are going to be less engaged and we will have a harder time keeping them focused in our circle time.

So, what can be active parts of your circle time?

This is where children are participating with you during your circle time rather than just watching or listening to you.

An example of this is where we might do singing in our circle time, so we might sing a song like heads shoulders knees and toes or I had a little turtle where children have to do the actions.

This will help our children be more engaged and prevent them losing focus as quickly.

Whenever, I saw the children getting bored during circle time I’d immediately start singing sleeping little bunnies which helped to get the energy back up and improve engagement.

The goal with active play is to just get our children to participate and or move their bodies.

Have resources ready

I mentioned earlier that often we can spend time setting up resources whilst trying to maintain our children’s attention and arrange our circle time which is my third tip.

To make sure that you have all your resources and materials ready prior to the circle time.

This sounds obvious, but we’ve all been there.

We gather all our children together ready to start our circle time off and then choose what book to read or decide on the songs.

But remember, whenever we’ve gathered our children together the clock on their attention span it winding down.

We have to act fast.

Every second is crucial, getting them together and then asking a child to choose a book is using up those precious minutes of attention that we have to play with.

So, why not consider asking your children in advance what book they might want to read for circle time so that when they are gathered you can start straight away.

Remember, even just turning around to play a song on a tablet or other device can cause a momentary lull in your circle time leading to a loss of attention.

So, think about even these short moments too and try to work something out that prevents this lull.

Just try to make sure you have all your resources ready so that there is less lull time during our circle time.

Change your routine regularly

My fourth advice is to make sure to change your nursery circle time routines regularly.

Your routine might be working now, but eventually children may get bored of it.

Which naturally will happen.

So, try to have a plan in place to keep your circle time routine fresh and exciting for your children.

Try different props, different songs, different activities.

Just try to switch it up every now and then to keep your children engaged.

What to do when your circle time isn’t working?

So, if your circle time isn’t working at the moment firstly go through this list and see whether you can adjust it based on what you’ve learnt here.

Ask yourself these questions.

Is your circle time to long for the children you are looking after?

Could you introduce more active parts of your circle time?

Are there any stoppages in your circle time or lulls where you are getting resources?

When was the last time you changed your circle time routine?

Answering and fixing these issues should help to make your circle time more engaging.

Often, we find ourselves trying to put too much things into our circle time, or trying to make them last a certain length.

This should be avoided.

There shouldn’t be pressure to make our circle times long especially knowing that there attention spans are quite short.

Circle time isn’t the only time that children learn and it’s important to remember this. Circle time is great, but we can get all the benefits from it from other aspects of our provision and children will be learning throughout the day that they spend with us.

Remember children learn practically alongside us.

So, they are more likely to learn something like their colours during a practical fun activity rather than us just telling them through a song.

So, try to take the pressure off of trying to teach children everything during circle time and just try to make it a fun period during the day where we get to spend time all together.

I challenge you to take out the things from your circle time which you may believe are really important for children’s education, like learning about the weather and just focus on having fun, focus on their communication and language development and their personal social and emotional development.

Plus, don’t stress if not all children participate. All children have different personalities and through repetition children will grow in confidence and you’ll find more children participating.

So, don’t put pressure on that child to participate, they may just not feel comfortable with you yet. I’ve had instances where a child hasn’t participated in the songs I’ve sung during circle time and I’ve found them singing the same songs later in the day.

So, don’t think that because the child isn’t participating yet, that they aren’t gaining anything from it.

One final tip I have for your circle time is what to do when your ending your circle time.

At the end of your circle time don’t just finish it and leave children to their own devices.

Let them know what will be happening next and the routine for the day.

You could even ask children what they want to do next.

This prevents the crazy period after circle time where no one really knows what is happening.

This helps children feel comfortable and secure in their environment as they know what the expectations are next for them.

And then off they go to the next thing.

And that’s how you create a nursery circle time routine that works.

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Thank you for watching and God bless.