Encouraging a toddler to sit for circle time

[playfelt]

Some kids sit well because they get a lot of practice at home sitting in front of the tv.

You might want to take a look at what you are doing and change some things. Things like calendar mean very little to a toddler who hasn't mastered the concept of the days of the weeks, etc. Like anything else, if you don't grab their attention in the first few minutes their interest is lost for the whole time.

Since he is your own you might have some success making him your helper for the circletime letting him sit beside you or even in front of you being snuggled. He won't see the pictures of the book but he will hear and feel your voice.

I mostly do circletime at the table with everyone sitting and those that don't stay are put into high chairs. I don't allow wandering off because the point of circletime is to learn to participate in a group and that sometimes we don't get to do what we want to do. We usually finish our circletime with colouring at the table.

Other "circletimes" I do are 5 minute lessons in various parts of the room so we gather at the feltboard for a session and later gather in the book area for a session, etc.

Like Reggio said, if I sit down on the floor they all come running to sit with me and then we do things till they start to lose interest and then we end it. I don't have a ritual type of circletime where we always do the same things in the same order such as calendar, weather, alphabet song, story,.... I just sit with my bin (plastic dishpan) of things to do and we pick things out and do them. If they seem into singing I pull more song things out, etc.