Circle/Meeting Time continues to be a fun experience for me, and from the children’s laughter and amazement, I think it is for them also. Many days I have planned ahead what I will talk about, and some days I talk about whatever pops into my head. Every day this week, our special visitor during Circle Time has been Olaf. When I brought him out on Monday, the excitement in the room could be measured on a Geiger counter. One of the children told me that Olaf can use his big nose to smell flowers. That comment had us scrambling to find flowers for him.

I don’t remember if I’ve shown you a picture of our blue and yellow trash cans. If you ask your child who lives in the trash cans, he/she will tell you that Donald Duck lives in the blue trash can and Daisy Duck lives in the yellow trashcan. Sometimes, they are in the wrong trash can and the children are shocked. How did those tricky ducks switch cans? This week, I picked up the trash cans (without the ducks) and Olaf used his nose to smell them. Do you know that trash cans smell YUCKY? The children helped Olaf shout YUCKY each time he stuck his nose in them. But that led to a problem for me. How could I put the ducks back in their trash cans if they smell YUCKY? I quickly looked through my art supply shelves and found ‘perfume’. You can see the dropper that was ‘filled’ with perfume to make the trash cans smell beautiful again.

Olaf’s nose told us that the trash cans are not ‘YUCKY’ anymore and Donald and Daisy were able to go back into their homes.

Every day when we sing our Hello song I remind the children to all help with the singing, sometimes to little avail. Today (Friday) I told the children that I would use my big ear so I can hear them better when they sing aloud. This prop, which I’ve used with great success over the years, was enough to get a loud rendition of the Hello song. It’s just amazing what my props can accomplish.

Today (Friday) the children enjoyed seeing Sock Monkey jump out of this music box. They had no idea as I turned the knob and we listened to the music, that the lid would pop open. I got a lot of mileage out of it on this cold day preventing us from going to the playground.