Autumn is just around the corner, and it's time to get my ideas for Circle Time down on paper. If you're new to Preschoolers and Peace and unfamiliar with our group teaching time we call Circle Time, here's a primer to get you started.

Changes around here mean that I can get back to a meatier Circle Time in the morning, right after breakfast and chores. We have a young woman living with us this year, and she'll be able to hang out with Mighty Joe while we try to accomplish some things. He's typically our loose cannon during Circle Time.

Incidentally, this would be the perfect opportunity for a mother's helper in your home, too. If you have a young woman or even a grandma to help out for just a few hours each week, you could plan a group teaching time to really get some fun and meaningful things accomplished, and she could watch your loose cannons (toddlers, babies, overly-zealous cats . . . )

Here's what we're going to tackle this fall (with affiliate links):

After we finish Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing, we'll jump into Long Story Short again. We're also studying the book of John at Community Bible Study, so I want to keep these devotionals short. No need for more study than what our weekly Community Bible Study provides in terms of daily study throughout the week.

The Mystery of History, Volume 3 - Coming up later this month, I'll be doing a post about how you can plan your Mystery of History so that you don't have to re-plan it every year. I'm on automatic pilot now, and it's easy to pull together each time.

Young Scholar's Guide to Composers - This is a nice companion to The Mystery of History Volume 3 because the Baroque and Classical Period composers begin to emerge in that time frame.

Discovering Great Artists - Also a good companion for The Mystery of History Volume 3, and it's designed to give a student a beautiful piece of artwork without a lot of complicated instructions or knowledge on the part of the instructor. Ahem. And the materials are common items, so no having to order fancy schmancy art stuff.

The Agape Children's Home is a ministry that rescues street boys in Kisumu, Kenya and restores them to their families. The work there is wonderful! I'm a little biased; our best friends since college help run the ministry and I love the activity pages for kids that Lisa has put together. We're going to use them in our Circle Time this fall, and you can, too!

We'll doubtlessly need to get outside and breathe some beautiful Autumn air. Six-year-old Christian will want to stomp through the crispy leaves (me too!) I love Maureen Spell's newest eBook called Nature Study Printables for Toddlers and Preschoolers. Geared toward the younger set, I think Christian will still like finding and discovering things around our property. We can bring our little finds back to the kitchen table and sketch them there.

And we'll work on memorizing the 10 Commandments and the books of the Bible with the little guys. Everyone did so well with their 10 verses this summer, I'm encouraged!

What about you? Have you planned your Circle Time for the fall? I'd love to hear your plans!