community circle/ farm photos

Due to some absolutely glorious autumn weather this week, I've fallen a bit behind on the blog, so I need to do some catching up. So come back soon and look for more posts! I should have quite a few over the next day or two.

In the meantime, I thought I'd finally share what I'm doing for a Community Circle for our local homeschooling group, while I share some recent photos of our farm.


The circle is held as a part of our Monday Homeschool Classes, which is a community of homeschooling parents who volunteer their time and talents to provide interesting class situations for our kids. There are approximately 100 children participating during this fall semester, and I believe over 50 homeschooling families who have taken advantage of the class offerings since this group came together. I had suggested last spring that all we were really missing was a Circle to help further our feeling of community. I offered to put a seasonally appropriate circle together for the fall, and the directors took me up on my offer.


Due to my time constraints, there was no way I could offer an opening circle at the beginning of the day, so we had to settle for after lunch, before the afternoon began. The only real problem with that is that some of the kids have already been in class all morning, and just need to run around and play, and some kids are only just arriving and seeing their friends after a week away. Both sets of kids can't possibly be expected to settle into a circle, and even those kids that might be in the right "place" for doing circle have found it difficult to participate without strong parental support. But we've found a core group of 4 or 5 families with a real interest in community circle to work with, and while my primary objective of bringing us all together as a community has not been realized, at least my secondary objective of getting MY kids in a group circle has. That's enough success for me for right now.

So here's my Autumn Community Circle: All activities are from the Enki Education Kindergarten or 1st Grade Movement books.

Call: I play several verses of "Round and Round" on my recorder to call everyone to circle, then we join hands, circle and sing the verse once or twice.

Circle activities:

Wild Good Flight (Canoe Song)
Leaf Journey
The Apple Tree
The Mill
When Mary Goes Walking
Harvest Crown
Milkweed Cradle
Owl

Closing: Make New Friends

I think that the families who are participating are enjoying the circle, and so am I. I know that my kids are. Zoo Boy has surprised me by actually participating in the entire circle each and every week, and has gone so far as to tell me how much he likes community circle. And I agree with him -- getting to sing, share and celebrate with other people certainly makes Circle more fulfilling.