This morning circle weekly planner is a post out of the 31 Days of Morning Circles. You can find the main page for this series here.
In the last post, I shared a daily structure (+ a free planner) to help you organize your daily morning circle routine.
It’s a good idea to also have a weekly routine—especially for the main activities part of the circle. Some children might have a difficult time understanding the days of the week and the time lapse between them.
This is why you’ll notice from the sample I shared on day 7, that I don’t work on calendar skills with my son. It’s too abstract a concept for him at this point. Instead, we work on specific skills/activities on specific days of the week. Rather than saying, “Today is Monday,” which means absolutely nothing to my son, I say, “Today is Drawing Day!” And, each Monday is indeed drawing day.
Over time, the child will internalize the routine. They’ll know that the day after Drawing Day is Exercise Day, and so on.
How to attribute skills to the morning circle activities
To decide what types of activities/skills you and the child want to focus on in the main activities section, create a list. Use criteria for subjects you already work on as inspiration. Then, categorize the criteria and attribute them to a corresponding day.
For example, on a weekly basis, my son works on:
- Fine motor
- Gross motor
- Communication/language
- Numeracy
- Nature studies
- Art
- Music
- ADL skills
Technically, we work on these skills daily, but formally, we emphasize them somewhere in the span of a week.
I use the morning circle to introduce a new skill because we are already in a safe setting. I am usually sitting close to my son and have his attention, so I can introduce a skill he’ll be using later in the day or week.
Since drawing is a fine motor activity, I’ve found that I can work on fine motor exercises through various drawing activities. For instance, drawing can be done using different tools (crayons, markers, chalk, finger, a stick, etc.) and on different surfaces (whiteboard, paper, chalkboard, sand, in the air, etc.) If I label Monday as “Fine Motor” day, it doesn’t mean anything to my son. Instead, I’ve dedicated Mondays to drawing and labelled it “Drawing Day”. This doesn’t mean we don’t draw on other days of the week. We just focus on drawing in the morning circle on Mondays.
In your homeschool, the skills/subjects you list might be something like this:
- Language/communication
- Math
- Social studies
- Science
- Music
- Art
- ASL
- Motor skills
It all depends on the child’s developmental level.
Possible weekly dedications to the main activities in the morning circle:
- Drawing Day
- Movement/Exercise Day
- Music Day
- Numbers Day
- Craft/Handwork Day
- Modeling Day
- Water Play Day
- Writing Day
- Word Day
- Nature Day
- Experiment Day
- Etc.
A sample morning circle weekly schedule:
This is a sample weekly circle planner. You can work with this schedule/routine for a month or so, then you can change it up. The possibilities are endless.
Create a weekly visual schedule for the child using images. On a weekly calendar, use laminated photos/drawings on Velcro to depict the activity of the day. Hang it in a spot where the child will have access to it. Announce the activity of the day (either before the circle or before the activity itself). When the activity is over, have the child remove the card.
To make the task easier for you, I’ve created a weekly planner (free to download also by clicking on image):
You can use this planner for more than just attributing weekly skills. I have given you enough space to make detailed notes to better plan the morning circle on a weekly basis. I’ve also included weekends.
What skills will you work on in the morning circle? What “days” would you add to the list?
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