You know how sometimes things dawn on you just a little too late? That’s what happened to me last Wednesday. After posting the blog “Spicing Up Calendar Time,” it dawned on me that I could add a little spice to your calendar time by giving away a The Ultimate Classroom Calendar Set from The Mailbox. We have two new sets: one for early childhood and one for elementary grades. Each set comes with 12 colorful calendar banners (one for each month of the year), a calendar grid, three sets of calendar pieces for daily patterning practice, more than 50 special-day markers, and two wipe-off posters for calendar time activities. In addition, online extras come with each calendar set. These include monthly arts-and-crafts projects, printable calendars, school notes, and much more!
Soooo here’s the plan! Click on “Spicing Up Calendar Time.” Post your idea for keeping calendar time exciting, and your name will be entered in a calendar set giveaway. Just be sure to do this before midnight ET, Thursday, January 31. If you’ve already posted an idea, you’re already entered!
I wonder what I’ll think of tomorrow? 🙂
Diane
Congratulations to Shirley! She’s the winner of our giveaway!
During calander time, we decide who gets to choose the a book for read aloud time. If the date is an odd number, someone with an odd amount of letters in their first name gets to choose. If the date is an even number, then a student with an even number of letters gets to choose. This gets the students comforatable with odd and even concept, looking at letters and counting as they “check” to make sure we have selected someone with the correct number of letters in their name.
For example: Today is January 28. Is it an even date.
Jonathan gets to choose a book. Let’s count the letters in Jonathan’s name…. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,6, 7, 8
Weather is part of my calendar time. As the winter months began here in N.E. Ohio, we began to graph the temperature. We used 32 degree as a middle point, pulled weather.com up. The students had to decide if the temperature was above or below 32. We then used stickers on a graph and put blue or red transparent squares on the calendar to indicate our findings. This sparked interest as they learned how cold it really could be here in N.E. Ohio.
We take turns dressing the bear. Right now for winter he has pants, coat, hat, boots, and mittens. The children love to dress the bear. We also count how many days. Today is January 28 so we would count to 28. They enjoy counting, and they are only 3-5 yrs old.
I also add Froggy to calendar time Froggy is dressed wrong for the weather by his Mom before class. Each child gets a turn at telling me what is wrong with his clothes and of course the weather as I always put up the wrong weather.
The kids take turns naming one thing wrong with Froggy and the rest tell me one article of clothing or correct weather to use.
I often put a foamie up that ties into the days theme on Froggy. It keeps the kids busy looking for mistakes. They love the foamie as they can guess what we are learning about that day. Always fun.
Weather is part of calendar and small circle time. We have helper days and it is the healpers job each day to guess the weather, choose a book and help with calendar. I have bears that are dressed for each kind of weather for the day. I currently have two and three year olds in my family child care.
We dress the weather bear each day. We count the calendar days and sing the days of the week song! I teach 2 and 3 year olds. I ask the children if this is a cold or hot month. Lots of fun!
Calendar time is a big time for us! The children and I love this time! I have a different child help me each day. We talk about the days of the week and the months and we Sing our songs about them. When we are done we do a dance to sit back down. We then talk about the date. The leader gets to pick out a special pointer to count and we pick a voice to use. It can be a “loud”,”whisper”,”funny” or “normal” voice. The children get a real kick out of this and it helps keep the interested in counting the numbers everyday. You never know what voice they will pick! We also talk about the weather. I like to keep a box of accessories that i have bought at garage sales. There are sunglasses, rain coat, boots, sandals, mini umbrella, mittens, light coat, heavy coat, ect. The leader gets to “dress for the weather.” It really is fun for them to visually see what to wear for the weather!
Our calander time is our learning and adventure time we all climb onto the “airplane” I have a large control pannel I made and we “fly” up and check the weather conditions, before leaving we have to call in the date and then check what we see going on this is a great way to find children intersts and learn more about different things such as one child saw a cave and we learned what animals live in the caves (not just bears and bats) super fun time
We try to keep this time new and exciting by tying it in with something that is happening in the “Student of the Day”s life. It’s a great way to make connections.
We switch the place we are doing the calendar activities every month or so. That way, they do not get set in their ways (students are prone to not want to do things differently otherwise).
We talk about how many days we have been in school ( I teach Kindergarten) students use that number to tell me something about it. For example, 99 is bigger than 7. 99 comes after 98 but before 100). We just introduced addition. So I will start having students write an addition problem for each day (using number 1-10 to start with). Attendance is also a big deal at my school so we track that on a graph. (Today was the first day since the last week of December I have had all 26 students and one more starts tomorrow)
We do part of our calendar on the Promethean Board and part on our meeting board, which seems to keep them engaged. I also like to include math riddles related to days of the week, seasons, etc. The students always enjoy solving those!
Same old weather important events of the day etc but our favorite thing is when we sing a good morning song to everyone and look into everyone’s eyes as we sing and wish they have a happy day. Way to start the morning on a happy note.
The helper of the day chooses which of the two days of the week song to sing. Then he/she decides the motions to do as we sing the months to the macarena song.
For our 3rd graders, we don’t have a set “calendar time.” However, we do explore the many different ways of making the date. For example, today is the 28th, so we brainstorm ways of making 28: 4 x 7, one quarter and 3 pennies, double 14, etc.
I dress up to represent days on calendar.
The special needs kids I teaching this.
Then we all get to make a part of the costume.
It could be a hat, belt, etc.
I love your giveaway! I posted my answer on the Spicing up your Calendar blog post! I love reading your blog! I always get such great ideas from other teachers! Thanks for keeping it up! 🙂
I teach Pre-School & K-4 and for our calendar time, I have the students sit in a circle on a carpet square. I start out by asking if everyone remembers the month and we say it together. We sing the Day of the Week” song and they helper for the day puts up the number and does the weather chart. We then sing “Mr. Sun” We either thank him for shining on us or ask him to please come out and shine on us. We also sing a season song, “It is Winter.”
We then 2-3 sing songs that go with our weekly theme and do a story.
Calendar time is our special time to start our day. The kids love the singing that goes along with the aspects of covering the important information. We do a special movement while singing the month song..J is for January while crossing our arms then touching our legs. We count the days while using our “magic hand”..a stuffed work glove with painted finger nails on a stick..to point to the numbers..we use a chosen way of speaking..whisper, whisper talk, etc..we sing “there are 7 days” then do the entire date while using the magic hand to point to the different parts of the calendar..