"Circle Time" Update

I think I read about the concept of "Circle Time" first on the Preschoolers and Peace website (which has recently changed, and I just realized that is why it hasn't been popping up on my Bloglines lately, and I think she hasn't changed over all of her archives yet because the Circle Time category is much shorter than it used to be...). The concept is to have a group time for things like singing and learning together.

I started this year with a tentative plan for how Circle Time might look with Hannah, but it has sort of evolved over the past three months. Hannah really likes Circle Time and asks for it if I forget about it. Here is what we do (this whole thing takes 5-15 minutes, depending on what else we have going on that day, and her level of interest):

• Hannah sits at her little desk and looks at her calendar. I ask her what month it is, she answers, I ask her what year it is, she answers. I tell her what day of the week it is, and then we say the days of the week together. I always laugh to myself when she says "Saturday" because she says "Satur-iddle-durdle-erdle-day" because she never remembers where to stop with the "urd" part of the word! We make a diagonal line through the day on the calendar so she gets the point of moving through a month.
• Sometimes we talk about the weather. But that gets boring because around here it's usually the same weather day to day, so I often skip this part.
  
• We leave two letters up per week, rotating out one old one and adding one new one every Monday. I have the uppercase and lowercase of each taped on the wall above her desk in the playroom so she can see them all day. She tells me what the letters are and what the main sound is that they make (this week it's "Big M, little m, m says 'mmmm'; Big N, little n, n says 'nnnnn'"). Sometimes if she's in the mood I will ask her to think of words that start with that sound.
  
• Some days we do colors and shapes by me drawing shapes in different colors while she identifies them, or by her telling me what color and shape she'd like me to draw. She gets frustrated when she tries to draw them, "diss is NOT RIGHT! Mama do it instead!" - so yeah, we need to work on this budding perfectionism problem, I wonder where she got that? We tend to talk about colors and shapes a lot during the day in the course of doing other things, so I don't do colors and shapes during Circle Time unless she specifically asks for it.
  
• Sometimes Hannah wants me to write her name for her, and then she pretends to write things too. I encourage her to start from the left and go to the right, but I figure that is enough at this point.
  
• We do questions and answers from the Children's Catechism. She has memorized the first 10 questions now. Many include grand hand and arm motions, most of her own invention.
  
• We work on a memory Bible verse.
  
• If she wants more Circle Time, we sing some Psalms and hymns.

I know that looks like a lot, but it's never longer than 15 minutes max, and more often it's much shorter.

Jack doesn't participate much at this point, but he does watch Hannah and listen avidly.

Here is an unrelated picture of Hannah being goofy. She actually asked me to take her picture by saying, "OK, you take a piksher, and I'll be cute!"