Teaching with a Calendar

[mother of faith]

http://www.jmeacham.com/calendar/calendar.binder.htm

Here is a great site for free downloads and for some great ideas for creating a calendar to teach math with for early learners. I got this rescource while I was snooping around www.hubbardscupboard.org which I love as you all know, they have updated their site and it is wonderful. I have my next year of school already planned, and now Kindergarten for as well. Check out these 2 sites if you have early learners as home.

[nhockaday]

So what exactly do you teach with a calendar? You said math, so are you teaching more than just days of the week?

[mother of faith]

We count to the days and subtract the days. It gets the LO ready for bar graphing and recording info as well. filling in the missing number, number order, and then it gets them ready for place values. I am customizing our calender binder as we speak. The more resources I find the more I will share and hopefully create as we go to post the worksheets sooon. I have so much going on right now that I calendar has even helped me. We place the word for the day on our calender, people's birthday, special events, holidays, etc so the children can learn not just the calendar days but what the month and or the day is all about. Why the month is called January what season it is, what animals are around then, plants, etc. So we use it for science, math, geography, histroy and phonics or spelling. we even practice writing the days of the week and so on. We first start off with using starfall the calender then print the sheets to add into our binders, then we go to the website below and get a song from Barb's tab and insert a new song for the month. We even do a simple art project each day of describing the month like today we did a tree with orange leaves, we just ripped small pieces of paper and glues them to our tree, little stuff like that, the harvest moon, the animals scurring for food, etc. We add a poem then we make up a story of the season and draw it. Today was the little squirells scurring aroung for a nut, then a hound dog came and scarred the little squirel, etc, etc. We drew a picture about it in our calendar binder.

[heyblue41]

wow!  I never reliazed how much you can teach with a calender!  I thought we were doing great because we were teaching today is wenesday, september 23, 2009!

[mother of faith]

that is a good place to start. I tend to go over board sometimes, but I have various age groups that we tutor besides teaching my LO's so I have to be versitile. Don't worry you will get there. I do know that where I live it is a requirement for our LO's in PreK to learn the calender well, and all of the days etc. so at 2 years old I am introducing my LO to the calender using starfall. Yeah maybe a little early but he already knows his numbers 1-5 so I thought we would work on math at the same time. I like to multi-task but also combine the things that I can together to make it easier on me.

[heyblue41]

I guess when I think about it I am using the calendar for more.  When we do the calendar we also say the pledge of alligence and sing the national anthem.  One child gets to hold the flag and the other gets to put the day on the calendar.  So we are learning to take turns, share and good citizenship, counting and the days of the week, months of the year, and how many weeks are in a month.  Thanks for giving me perspective on what my children are really learning.  Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees, and I feel like I should be doing more because they love to learn.  I have to require that they spend a minimum of 1 hour outside everyday.  Many days after about 20 minutes they tell me they want to go back in and do more school! 

[Mum]

Thank you mother of faith. Your calendar ideas sound really easy to plan and add to our activities.

Mum.

[mother of faith]

heyblue41, that is a great idea as well. It is great that you allow time for physical education as well. That's good now a days most kids spend 2 hours or more on video games so that it awesome to inspire being physically fit at a early age, just being outside spreads a whole new adventure on life.

Mum, thanks. I hope to have some resources on my site soon for everyone.

[kizudo]

Slightly off topic, but just wanted to share...

This is a fun little song I used to sing with my kgtn class and now my son (18mo) enjoys:


Tune: Battle Hymn of the Republic

January, February
March, April and May
June, July and August
with September on it's way
October and November
With December at the end
Then we start all over again

I used to make the kids jump up from a crouching position when their birthday month was mentioned...and, of course, sing each round faster and faster until I feigned getting dizzy or the class got to rowdy with all the jumping up and down

[Chris1]

Interesting patterns in calendars.

Determine the last day of February

Even months:  4th April, 6th June, 8th August, 10th October and 12th December will all fall on the same day. 

Odd months:  May, July, September and November.  Months:  5, 7, 9 and 11.

•   for the 9th month,  the 5th falls on the same day
•   for the 5th month,  the 9th falls on the same day
•   for the 7th month, the  11th falls on the same day
•   for the 11th month, the 7th falls on the same day

Use the following mnemonic phrase to remember the pattern:

I work 9-5 at the 7-11

"Nine to five" is a common working day, and 7-Eleven is a chain of convenience stores.

The 7th of March, exactly one week after the last day of February, no matter whether it's the 28th or 29th, also falls on the same day of the week.

Finally, we have to be able to do January: It's January 3rd three years out of four, the non-leap years. It's January 4th only in the fourth year, the years divisible by 4.

Once you know the day of the week for the 28/29th of February you can easily mentally calculate the day of any date in that year. You simply add, subtract using multiples of 7. With a little practice it becomes easy to mentally picture the month and see the day that a date falls on. I suspect that children with autism that do the calendar trick probably use a similar approach.

 Interactive Calendar :   http://www.apples4theteacher.com/calendar.html

Chris.

[Mary M]

Thanks for the great advice

[mother of faith]

Thanks so much for the info and the link. I can use this site for my curriculum. Thanks for the great info on more calender ideas.

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