Use Question of the Day for preschool to make your circle time routine engaging and educational at the same time.
There is no doubt about it that one of the favorite and most-loved circle time activities that I do is Question of the Day.
My class looks forward to it each time, and some of them even bring their parents over to see it at the end of the day. Talk about making my teacher heart burst.
Sometimes it feels like there’s so much to do in a day and so little time to do it. And when it comes to circle time, it might feel like we have a lot we want to go over but their attention spans are itty bitty. Children start to lose focus around 10 minutes when they are sitting still.
That means two important things to me.
- I need to be very intentional about what I focus on in circle time. I am super picky now when it comes to circle time activities. I want to do circle time activities that add true value to my class that they actually love to do. I don’t want to have to stop every few minutes to address behavior. We don’t have time for that. Not me and not them. After doing circle time for about 15 years and seeing other amazing teachers do it too, I just skip to the best activities that keep children’s attention and get them excited to come over when I say we’re going to start circle time in two minutes.
- There needs to be some movement and engagement all throughout circle time. When we know that children only have those precious and quick 10 minutes of sitting in them before we start to lose them, we need to use this to our advantage. And in preschool, we get to have classes that are interactive and fun. After preschool, most children won’t get those fun and magical moments that are the highlight of preschool. I always start circle time with action and movement songs or dance songs because then I know that their brains are ready to listen. They’ve crossed the midline, and now they can concentrate and focus better as they listen to me and their friends in the class.
Question of the Day
So why I do decide to go with Question of the Day as one of my treasured preschool circle time activities?
I noticed that during circle time I would get hands raised and I would call on a child and then the child would tell me about something completely unrelated to what we were talking about. They would want to tell me a story about what they did over the weekend. Or about the funny thing their pet did that morning.
At first, I was asking myself, “Is anyone even listening to me?!? My question had nothing to do with that.”
But then it hit me.
Children want to use large group time to share with the class about themselves.
As someone who loves to use my own student’s interests and cues to help guide my teaching, I decided that we could come to a good balance with some good old Question of the Day prompts.
My students would be interested in it because they would get that chance to release their burning desire to talk about themselves. And I also loved what they would be learning at the same time.
Question of the Day Skills
Now let’s get down to the nitty, gritty of using Question of the Day.
What are children actually learning during Question of the Day?
Let’s talk literacy skills. Question of the Day in preschool and kindergarten helps teach:
- Print awareness
- Letter recognition
- Sentence structure
And now math skills. Question of the Day helps children learn about:
- Graphing
- Comparing
- Categorizing
They are even developing those super important social/emotional skills by:
- Developing classroom community
- Practicing listening to their classmates
- Learning to take turns
There are lots of ways to do Question of the Day. That’s the out of the box person in me talking. I’ve seen teachers use it by doing Yes/No questions, but I take it a lot further.
I love to ask questions that are more open-ended or have an answer that they can quickly choose. An added bonus is that it also gives you lots more ways to graph the children’s answers, and as a person who loves graphs, charts, and data, this is right up my alley.
We use it to dive into important topics, silly ideas, to play games, and to laugh with one another.
There are so many topics or preschool themes you can use for Question of the Day, but I have five favorite topics that I can use any time of the year for Question of the Day:
- Colors
- Shapes
- Emotions and Feelings
- My Name
- Animals
This is what I based my Question of the Day prompts on. These are great for anyone who is looking to have another meaningful activity for their circle time, someone who has never done Question of the Day before, and anyone who likes to have circle time ideas ready to go ahead of time.
I made my Question of the Day cards so that they easily fit into a pocket chart, but they are also perfect for whiteboards, bulletin boards, or anything similar.
Question of the Day Color Prompts
For colors, my absolute favorite question, which happens to be theirs too, is, “What’s your favorite color?”
Then we graph it by each color. I like to let my students come up and put their own name under the color they selected.
That way I’m incorporating some simple hands-on interaction and movement since they are helping too by walking up and finding their name.
Question of the Day Shape Prompts
My favorite part of the Question of the Day shape section is the game, “What Am I?”
It gives clues to help children figure out which shape is being used.
The more interactive I make circle time, the more my little learners want to participate. And games are always a winner.
Question of the Day Emotions and Feelings Prompts
Social/emotional skills are one of the most overlooked skills in the preschool years, but it is one of the most important times to practice them.
I make it a daily practice to talk about our feelings.
Plus, it makes a perfect question of the day for preschool.
When I talk about feelings and emotions during circle time, I can make it our entire circle time topic if that’s what I’m aiming for that day. I’ll ask the children about questions that will get them thinking and help them relate their feelings to words. But then again, if I just want to make it simple and quick, then I don’t dive as deep into our questions.
Question of the Day My Name Prompts
A teacher friend and I were talking about the importance of using our students names throughout the day, especially in a positive way.
Lots of times when children hear their names, it’s followed by, “don’t do that” or “stop that.”
Displaying children’s names in positive ways is a game changer, and I like to do it in as many ways as I can think of.
So each day at circle time we sing one another’s names with welcome songs and we talk about them for question of the day.
Question of the Day Animal Prompts
Probably the topic that children love to talk about the most is animals!
And it goes far beyond the preschool years. In second grade, my daughter’s class had a guinea pig, and she had guinea pigs on the brain 24/7 for months. She wrote about them, researched them, drew pictures, and couldn’t think of much else besides guinea pigs.
Each child has that one type of animal that they are fascinated by or just love.
So I came up with circle time lesson plans that involved animals in my Question of the Day activities.
I like to spend about a week on each topic. Topics such as animals can go on for ages, and you could do different animals each month. There are so many possibilities with it. Other topics that we love to ask questions about are holidays, insects and bugs, or whatever theme we are working on for the week.
Overall, it’s important to make the question of the day time for kids something that is simple for you to implement. No one has tons of prepping time, and Question of the Day should be easy and not a burden. For years, I just wrote out Question of the Day on easel paper or a whiteboard.
If I can’t easily do a Question of the Day idea, then it just doesn’t happen. I have a tendency to overcomplicate things, so my system is easy-peasy.
Question of the Day Printable Cards
I made my own Question of the Day printable cards so that each time I do Question of the Day now, it’s all set and easy to use on different classes. Once you prep it once, it’s all set forever.
And can I be honest? I learned a few years ago that as much as I love laminating my teaching materials, I love not having to laminate them even more!
So when it comes to Question of the Day, I have a secret. I print them out on photo paper instead of regular paper. That way they are all pretty and glossy, and I wasn’t spending the day cutting and laminating. All I do is print and cut once. Laminating still has its benefits, but I just love that shortcut.
We love to use these quick and easy preschool question of the day printables that I made that easily fit right into a pocket chart. And my class loves how engaging circle time is!
Katie T. Christiansen
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