From the time Jack and Lu were toddlers most mornings started off with some type of circle time.  I spent several years teaching preschool and between what I picked up then and new Waldorfy stuff added in the mix I had quite a circle time repertoire. I had heard that other people had a tough time making circle time work in their home but honestly I figured they must not have had my circle time skills.  Ha!  Enter last year, when circle time began to fail miserably.  

Mornings are tough times of the day for us.  Often my kids will argue with each other (shocking!) or give major resistance to completing their morning responsibilities. This usually happens right before the time I had scheduled for circle, meaning I was trying to lead a circle while quite irritated.  Does not work.  Or J and L would act insanely goofy during the circle time activity.  Leading to my irritation and off we go.  So I dropped the circle time part of our morning.  With the circle time gone, I started having us start our day outside so that there was a little activity before school.  This works well unless it is freezing out and I don’t want to go out, or unless we are already running behind on the day.

Okay, this is supposed to be a post about “play” not my rant about mornings around here, so I’ll get to the fun!  On the days we don’t get outside, we now start our mornings with jumping rope.  The jump rope lives on the unused front door in my living room.  I bet you have somewhere in your house where it can live as well!

The rope is tied on the door knob so it only needs me to swing it.  Both kids learned how to jump rope by running and jumping back and forth over a slightly swaying rope while I recited poems.

Then they progressed to jumping while I swung a very slow and hesitant rope.

For us it is a perfect morning starter – active, fun and I can pull it off even when I’m in an irritated mood!  We are constantly on the hunt for new and fun jump rope rhymes.  You would think that the internet would be teeming with them, but surprisingly not so.  And for some reason lots of jump rope rhymes are girlfriend / boyfriend based and involve kissing.  Kissing is not appreciated around here lately. “Oooh! Gross!”  Although I will admit that Cinderella does regularly go upstairs to kiss her fella.  Here are some of our favorites:

Teddy bear, teddy bear,
Turn around.
Teddy bear, teddy bear,
Touch the ground.
Teddy bear, teddy bear,
Show your shoe.
Teddy bear, teddy bear,
That will do.
Teddy bear, teddy bear,
Go upstairs.
Teddy bear, teddy bear,
Say your prayers.
Teddy bear, teddy bear,
Turn out the light.
Teddy bear, teddy bear,
Say good night. 

Apples, peaches, pears and plums
Tell me when your birthday comes:
(jump rope quickly and recite month’s name, trying not to get out until your’s comes)

Bubble gum, bubble gum 
In a dish.
How many pieces
Do you wish?
One, two, three…

I also look for nontraditional poems that have a good rhythm for jumping rope.  A poem in Annette’s circle time post on Tuesday works well for us:

See my candle burning
With a golden light,
Shining from my window
Out into the night.
I can light a candle,
God can light a star;
Both of them are helpful,
Shining where they are.

Jumping rope is also great for math practice.  During Lucy’s Quality of Numbers block I found or made up a jumping poem for most of the numbers.  Quite a few can be found in Marsha Johnson’s Quality of Numbers block.  She also has jumping rhymes for several of the stories in her first grade fairy tales and letters blocks.  Here is one I made up for the number three:

Three wise men and three billy goats
Three little kittens who lost their mittens
Three brother pigs and three big bears
If they come in here I’ll run up the stairs
Three main colors red, yellow, blue
Count by threes you know what to do
Three, six, nine… 

We’ve recently added learning the Chinese jump rope to our routine. My friends and I loved this when we were in third grade.  I remember practicing at home with both sides secured on chair legs!

Written by Sarah Cornett

Sarah lives in upstate NY with her two children, husband, two cats and various and assorted chickens.  She is the editor of content at Homespun Waldorf and also the administrator of the Homespun Waldorf forum.  She writes about homeschooling and mothering with attempted honesty at sistermama gets real. 

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