Calender Corner

What's Over There?

In our calender corner we have a list of the months; a monthly calender with the days of the week, number days, year, and important date pictures (birthdays, vacation, holidays); ones, tens, and hundreds pockets with straws to count the days of school; and a birthday display with candles. 

     

How We Do It 

After our morning message, all 40 of us move to the Nemo rug to talk about the calender. 

1st review the months of the year. The teacher talks about what month it is and how the months don't just stop when we get to December, they start all over! We ask one of the calender helpers to come up and point to each month while the class says them. We clap on the month we're in just to make sure we all know where we are! We use this song to remember all the months. While singing it, the kids thinks is super fun to crouch down and roll your hands while singing. Then, when the song says the month of the year it is, everyone jumps up in the air! 

After the month, we talk about the day of the week it is. Just like the months, we talk about how the days start over when you get to Sunday. We then talk about when day of the week it is. During this, we say each day and then clap on whatever day it is. We do this quite a few times because some students get confused since this part changes everyday. After we talk about the day for a bit, we play a song about the days of the week! The students think it is hilarious to pretend like they are rapping and we all sway seven fingers in the are while singing/rapping about the week. 

Now that we know the month and the day of the week, we need to talk about what day of the month it is. We usually start out by letting students guess what day it is to see if they understand that days of the month are ordinal. If yesterday was the 10th, tomorrow won't be the 30th. The cards we use in the month chart are a pattern of apple, star, apple, star, etc. We let the students guess what the picture will be before we turn it over. Some pick up on the patter pretty early but it takes a while for others. Once you can see the patter forming, we point it out to all our students and use fun motions to remember. For this apple-star patter we had students pretend to bite an apple while say the number of the day that had an apple for the picture. Students make star motions with their hands for each day that had a star picture. This helps because they get into the rhythm of making the motion while counting so we just say 'freeze!' when we get to the number of the month and have them look at what motion they are doing. This is also when we talk about important events and birthdays.

To end our calender corner, we have the students say the WHOLE date. Before we start, we ask "who thinks that they can say if all by themselves?" If think think they can, they put their hands up in the air. If they think they need a little help, they put their arms straight out. If they want a lot of help, they keep their hands in their lap. Then, we all say it together like "Friday, August 10th, the year 2012"