Circle Left or was that Right?

Circle Left with kindergarten. That was interesting!

Well, introducing the song, following script somewhat. We first did the song sitting in our places. I sang "touch your nose" touching my nose and on "do-oh-do-oh" put my hands in the air. At "shake those fingers down" I did exactly that. The class caught on quite quickly to the song and the movements. I intended to practice and remind them to shake their fingers down at the end but they pointed it out to me and reminded
their classmates that they needed to do that at the end.

It was fascinating to watch them take over the song and sing it over and over and over with all the motions. Sometimes it is hard to stop them and move on to something else when they just want to repeat it again and again! This is a good thing and a bad thing rolled into one!

Once we managed to move ahead I introduced the words "circle left" which of course they learned right away. We talked about what the song was telling us now and discussed how we could make circles sitting in our places. We used our arms, our fingers, switching from right to left hand. No one suggested any other body part but thinking back now I realize I didn't encourage them to consider anything else. Not that I discouraged it but I didn't lead them to thinking of some other way besides our fingers, hands and arms. I will have to remember to suggest a nose or ear?

We then got up from our places and made a large circle. Making circles is always interesting with any age children. I sometimes don't see any difference between the circle making skills of a kindergarten student and a 5th grader. We sang the song and followed the motions but not giving any special attention the words LEFT in the song. I felt that we needed to accomplish merely walking in a circle before we tried going to the left.

We did then point out that the song does say circle "left" and we discussed different ways to find our left hand. For example, some students that is the hand they put their pencil in (write with), we know that we do the pledge of allegiance with our right hand over our heart so our left must be the other hand :-), and then I showed them how when you hold your hands out in front of you, you can make the letter L with your left hand. It is backwards with your right hand. As you can see, discussing which way is left can be a lengthy matter.

Once decided which way was left, we sang the song and circled "left"!