Calendar Time

One of the things we started this January, is a calendar time. I purchased a large bulletin board sized calendar from Michaels. I took everything to Copy Corner and had it laminated. It was less than $25 to do and I cut everything out myself. They offered to do it for me at Copy Corner but it would have cost extra. Plus it gave me something to do while watching my shows. I found a spot in my home that could be easily accessed and just stapled it up. I use scotch tape on the numbers and the days of the week.



There are lots of ways you can teach with your calendar but here is what we try to do every morning. I move the days of the week around on the spots that say "Yesterday was...", Today is..." and "Tomorrow will be..." and say it out loud as I change them. So there it is teaching them the proper way to talk about past, present and future. It also helps in learning the order of the days.

So then I say, for example, "Today is Friday, March 19, 2010. Can you find that on the calendar?" Then one of the boys will find it and we will talk for a minute about what we have planned for the day. We will talk about any birthdays that are that day or we will look ahead and count towards a special day they are looking forward to. That is a way to incorporate math into Calendar Time. Then we sing the "Days of the Week" song. Which I found HERE. We do the version that is sung to the tune of "The Addams Family". Josh learned it pretty fast and Caleb gets them right most of the time. Simon dances to the song while we sing and tries to snap his fingers.

We occasionally talk about the weather too. It came with a little card to put different tags with weather on them. That is in a different spot in our house. I enjoy calendar times and it usually helps to set the tone for the day. I think I am going to start saying a morning prayer with them at this time too. It is always a good idea to start the morning off with prayer, right?!