So I bet a lot of our families wonder what some of circle time activities are that we get up to in the Burrow, even more so when their child goes home and mentions maybe “scrunchie” or “songbox” or “joggle bopper” or our new favourite the…“parachute”.
So, here’s a little show and tell of some of the things we get up to!
Meet scrunchie, a massive elasticated, circular shaped piece of fabric. Now he lives in a little green bag AND sometimes, only sometimes, he likes to give the children a piece of imaginary chocolate at the end of his show! When scrunchie comes out to play, we often sing songs like “row, row, row your boat” or “up like a rocket, down like the rain” which encourage some gross motor movement, for example, moving forwards and backwards, from the burrowers. For example, the song, “up like a rocket” goes a bit like this…and yes, did you guess?? It’s a Soraya special!!
“Up like a rocket, (all together holding the scrunchie, we lift our arms up high)
Down like the rain, (all together holding the scrunchie, we bring our arms back down)
Back and forwards like a choo choo train” (all together we move forwards and backwards)
Now song box, this is a Burrow tradition. So, it’s just an old shoe box, with a range of different objects/toys that we can sing about. For example, we’ve got a star – for twinkle twinkle little star. We’ve got a happy face – for happy and you know it. We’ve got an astronaut for 3 little men in a flying saucer and the list goes on! So the practitioner leading the circle time, will choose a child in the circle to choose from song box, the child will choose a toy/an object, place it on top of the shoe box so then all our other friends can see the toy/object and then we begin singing!
The joggle bopper, this ball is compact with clever sensory technology that once activated comes alive with flashing lights, giggles and jiggles as it vibrates itself into an infectious laughter! We love to take turns with the joggle bopper, sitting together in a circle we each have a go at holding it whilst it makes our arms wiggle and jiggle, then we pass it to our friend sat next to us. In the past I know a few parents have asked us where they could get one from, so if you are interested have a little look on www.prezzybox.com or good old Amazon!
The parachute! The parachute is a wonderful way to develop co-ordination and social play through a group activity. The parachute is great for gross motor movement whilst also helping to develop and create trust and co-operation at the same time. A wide variety of different games can be played such as balls and bean bags can be bounced on the parachute. Children learn to co-operate in order to keep the bean bags or balls on the parachute or bouncing them off…….but it’s also just really fun to lift up the parachute and run underneath!!
We love to have a range of activities for circle time in the Burrow. Other activities we do are, musical instruments, noisy neighbour, ring games and of course, stories!
Please feel free to ask any member of staff in the Burrow of what we get up to, I know a lot of children go home and talk about things we get up to!
Thanks for reading
Nic