5 Fun Circle Time Activity Ideas Early Years Inspiration

hi everyone today i'm going to be showing you five early years circle time activities that you can conduct with the children in your setting we've picked these activities out because they're fairly straightforward to conduct and also don't require too many resources but they're still lots of fun as you probably already know circle time is time when you and the children in your setting all sit down in large circle and play lots of different activities together particularly after the year we've had social interaction is really important thing that we should be building back up in early years settings and alongside this these activities help build range of other skills including turn taking awareness motor skills communication and concentration so let's get into it first up pass the movement for this activity you won't need any physical resources as instead you'll be using your body hand gestures and movements if you know the telephone game this one is fairly similar but instead of words you'll be using gestures to start off with try something simple like clapping your hands or crossing your arms and then let this movement travel around the circle you can make it bit more challenging by asking the little ones to not only remember the previous movement but also add their own movement on to create sequence as circle time games such as this do tend to get used quite often it could be good idea to combine it with the telephone game so that instead of just movements you are also including some words so you could have the children sing line of song or make smile clap combining those elements will help make the game bit funner and more fresh but nonetheless it will be helping children with their turn taking attention to detail and also just communication next up spot the color for this activity what you'll need is color spinner similar to the one from the game twister you can either use physical color spinner or digital one similar to this one so that you can get it up on big screen in the room what you then need to do is get the children to take it in turns to spin the colored spinner and whichever color it lands on they then need to quickly as they can find something in the room that matches that color to make it bit more challenging you can make it rule that each child needs to find something new from the room that other children haven't already identified this helps to ensure that they're paying attention when other players are involved in the game and also that they can quickly identify colours while it's their turn next up snowball for this activity what you'll need is post-it notes and pen and the overall concept of this is to have matching pairs of snowballs with certain drawing on which you then give one snowball to each child for example if you have 12 children you'd have 6 matching pairs of snowballs the good thing about this activity is it that is very flexible and depending on whatever you're teaching at that time for example numbers letters shapes or drawings you can have that be the focus of the game to get this game started hand each child piece of paper which they then screw into snowball and throw into the middle of the circle once all the children have done this they all need to then run into the middle of the circle and pick up new snowball making sure that they don't pick up their own once they have their new snowball they open it up and try to find their matching partner if you have an odd number of children you'll have one person without partner and this is normally called the champion this activity has real focus on communication skills for the children as they have to be making sure to contact lots of the other children trying to find their matching pair they also might be paired with child who they haven't really spoken to before but who isn't their good friend so it helps build those new connections within the children's group next up spin the bottle this is child-friendly version of the classic game and all you'll need is an empty plastic bottle and flat surface to get the game started place the bottle in the middle of the circle and choose one child to come up and start spinning it they then spin the bottle and shout one of the other children's names that child then has to come up and pick up the bottle before it stops spinning then it's their turn to spin the bottle and shout another child's name and then the game just keeps on repeating like this again this activity helps children build their focus as they need to be listening out in case the other child who's spinning the bottle calls their name it also helps with their fine motor skills as they have to be spinning the bottle carefully and also making sure they're jumping up and getting there quickly as they can and last up change for this activity what you'll need is some small different coloured balls and the good thing about the game is that depending on the age of the children and how often they've played the game you can take it to different levels of ease or difficulty to start off just have one colored ball moving around the circle in one direction then once you shout change the children have to switch direction of the ball this helps the children to listen out for instructions and be focused on the game to make it bit more complicated you can have two or three balls going around the circle in the same direction and of the same color still similarly when you shout change the balls will have to switch direction this helps the children to listen out and build focus and make sure that they're ready to switch whenever you shout it out to level it up bit you can then complicate things by having two different colors moving around the circle at once this activity requires lot of teamwork and cooperation as it can be challenging so the children need to make sure they support each other because at times things can go wrong but nonetheless it's still lot of fun well anyway that's wrap hope you've enjoyed these five activities and have got some ideas that you can take back to your earlier setting make sure to check out the rest of our channel as we have few more of these types of activity videos ready for you to get inspired thanks and see you next time you