harvest adventure circle

I figured it's time to blog the details of our Harvest Adventure Circle.

We are doing Adventure Circle every weekday morning. We start the same way we started circle last year, with the song "Round and Round", to which we sing and hold hands and circle. (Unless otherwise noted, all of the songs and verses from this circle can be found in the Enki Kindergarten Movement book.) I've also decided to include notes on why I've chosen certain songs and activities for our circle, as I seemed to get a lot of questions about that last year.

After our opening, I introduce our adventure by saying "The Harvest is upon us! It's time to pick fruit in the orchard, reap grain from the field, and gather nuts in the forest. It's Harvest Time!"

We then do "Recorder Song -- Autumn" (which works on crossing the right/left midline, skills needed for handwriting, and practices the proper position of the recorder for future recorder lessons), and on the third verse, we mime playing a recorder and sing "ta ta" instead of the words (as recommended in the Kindergarten Movement book), and walk down the hall to the kids' room to the beat of our "music".


When we get to the kid's room, I say "First stop, the orchard!" and we do "Green Orchard" (which is a warm up activity that works on core strength the way we do it). On the last verse, as we sing "the apples are ripe and ready to fall" I throw balls across J's lofted bed, and as we sing "and here is a basket to gather them all, I hand the kids cloth shopping bags. I then explain that the apples are way up in the branches of the tree, and they'll have to climb up to pick them. They scramble up into the loft, and grab up all the apples and put them in their bags. Then they climb back down to Zoo Boy's bed and we count how many apples they each have (one-to-one matching math skill). Then we do "The Apple" (a fingerplay that works on tactile skills, right/left, and handwriting skills). After that, it's another round of the "ta ta" verse from "Recorder Song" as we move back down the hall to the living room.

Upon arriving in the living room, I say "Here is a field of ripe corn! In the spring, we planted our seeds in Mother Earth, and all summer long Father Sun shone down on the corn plants, Sister Rain brought them cool, refreshing water to drink, and Brother Wind gently rocked them. Now the corn is ripe and ready for us to harvest." (The Mother Earth, etc, reawakens the last Adventure Circle we did last year, about planting seeds -- Zoo Boy excitedly made the connection the 2nd or 3rd time we did the circle.) We then do "Sickle" (which works on right/left midline crossing and is a vestibular activity as well). We repeat the verse 4 times, then I exclaim "Phew! That was hard work! But now all of our reaping is done, and we can bring our grain to the mill." We do "The Mill"(another midline activity with a vestibular component), and then move right into another round of "ta ta"s, which takes us around the kitchen and back into the living room for our next set of activities.

Back in the living room, I announce that we have arrived in the woods. "There are many nut trees in the woods -- Hickory, Walnut, and Chestnut. We can gather the nuts to use in our baking, but the trees are too tall to climb. We have to wait for the wind to knock down the nuts before we can collect them." We then do "Leaves Be Green" (which is in the Enki 1st Grade Movement book), and then look around for nuts. "Do you see any nuts yet?" I ask the kids. When they respond in the negative, I say "Oh well, I guess we'll just have to wait! While we're waiting we can play some games." We then do several academic games.

The first game is the "Months/Season Verse" (working on learning the 12 months and 4 seasons), followed by "Counting and One-One Matching" (where we practice counting to 100, working on body-mapping the counting by tapping a different part of our bodies for each set of 10), and a Jump Rope Activity (from the Grade 1 Movement book), shown above, where the kids practice jumping across a rope moved on the ground in rhythm to a verse (working on balance, coordination, and a myriad of gross motor skills). Between each activity we pause and look for nuts, and on not finding any, we sing a verse of "Leaves Be Green" and then move on to the next game.

After the last game, we search again for nuts, and still not finding any, we act discouraged. "But wait!" I declare, "What is that sound?! It's a loud rushing sounds. A sort of whooshing sound. What could that be??" We all yell "the wind!!", and do "Loud Winds" (a base sense activity that works on proprioception amongst other things). During the last verse, I drop beanbags around the room and hand the kids bags to collect them in. They then crawl around on hands and knees (like a squirrel) to gather the "nuts", as we sing "Nut Pie". (The crawling works on naval radiation, which is key to core strengthening, and is something that Zoo Boy very much needs work on.) Once all the "nuts" are gathered, we count them (one-to-one matching math activity).

I then declare the harvest a grand success! "We have picked apples in the orchard, reaped grain in the field, and gathered nuts in the forest. It's going to be a GREAT Autumn!" We then close with a spiral while we sing "Sun Is Rising".

My thoughts on how it's going tomorrow, along with other thoughts from the first week of our first block of our first first grade year!