Aiden Posted April 13, 2015 Share Posted April 13, 2015 What is your favorite resource or tool for teaching calendar skills? Once we start K in the fall, I intend to have a "morning time" that includes calendar work. I plan to incorporate learning days of the week, months of the year, and seasons. We'll talk about today's day and date, what yesterday was, and what tomorrow will be. I'd also like to include a discussion of what season it is, what the weather was like the day before and how closely it matched the prediction, and what the predicted weather for today is. (I wouldn't be surprised if we drop the weather stuff--we'll be living in a location where the weather isn't all that variable.) I've looked at the teaching calendars available on Amazon, and there are SO many options! I'm not quite sure where to start. Can you help me narrow it down? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmasc Posted April 13, 2015 Share Posted April 13, 2015 I'll tell you what we have used for 2 years and love! It's the free printable calendar stuff from the blog Confessions of a Homeschooler. It does take a bit of work/supplies to set up, but is reusable year after year. I bought a laminated wall calendar and the Velcro rounds from an office supply store. I use the little Velcro pieces on the back of the 'day' number pieces and it works beautifully. Since we only put one number up each day, it really helped my kids understand how it all works---days, weeks, weekends, etc. We also use the season printable and the 'what's today, tomorrow, yesterday' printable and my kids just love moving the little Velcro things each morning. I purchased a large outdoor thermometer that we'd look at every morning before calendar time. I also hung an analog clock above the calendar and worked on telling time too. We'd record it all in the Daily Learning Notebooks that I also printed from the same blog. It's all we've ever used and it has worked great here! HTH! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carriede Posted April 13, 2015 Share Posted April 13, 2015 I bought a pocket calendar off of Discount School Supply. The one I have has months, dates, days, years, seasons, and weather cards. I've also used Confessions of a Homeschooler's materials for the calendar notebook. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thegirlwhopaintedtrees Posted April 13, 2015 Share Posted April 13, 2015 There's an app we used when my son was in Prek and K called Calendar Time. It's handy because it takes up no wall space. It does a pattern each month and incorporates money and clocks. You can set the level to make those questions easier or harder. You can have multiple accounts for different students as well if you have a first grader for instance who might do their calendar time independently. While it does not mention seasons (I can get my husband to add that in. My son already knew his seasons when I had my developer husband make me the app. I was on bed rest two years ago for 12 weeks and needed a portable calendar time.) it does ask the weather for each day and then graphs it. I can get my husband to add in seasons if that is something people want in a calendar time. My son already knew his seasons when I had my developer husband make me the app. I was on bed rest two years ago for 12 weeks and needed a portable calendar time. With the smart boards at schools, we've just come to find out that some schools are actually using this app in the classroom! Anyway, you can go look at the screenshots and see if it would fit what you need. https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/calendar-time/id705434014?mt=8 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymomtime Posted April 13, 2015 Share Posted April 13, 2015 There's an app we used when my son was in Prek and K called Calendar Time. It's handy because it takes up no wall space. It does a pattern each month and incorporates money and clocks. You can set the level to make those questions easier or harder. You can have multiple accounts for different students as well if you have a first grader for instance who might do their calendar time independently. While it does not mention seasons (I can get my husband to add that in. My son already knew his seasons when I had my developer husband make me the app. I was on bed rest two years ago for 12 weeks and needed a portable calendar time.) it does ask the weather for each day and then graphs it. I can get my husband to add in seasons if that is something people want in a calendar time. My son already knew his seasons when I had my developer husband make me the app. I was on bed rest two years ago for 12 weeks and needed a portable calendar time. With the smart boards at schools, we've just come to find out that some schools are actually using this app in the classroom! Anyway, you can go look at the screenshots and see if it would fit what you need. https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/calendar-time/id705434014?mt=8 I'm now looking for an iTunes gift card...I hope I have one. I think this would work really well for me. Thank you! I would love to see the seasons added. My son knows them, but needs a bit of reinforcement, especially when it comes to the order. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farrar Posted April 13, 2015 Share Posted April 13, 2015 We did some of that stuff back then, but it was the big picture that was hardest for my kids, so when they were maybe 4 yo (or just before?) we made a huge wall calendar that was the seasons and months in order. And then we put all the things they thought of to mark the time on there. So obvious things like holidays, but also things like apple and strawberry picking, going to the beach, their birthdays, the Renaissance festival, etc. because they were always asking, "When will it be Halloween?" "When will we pick strawberries again?" "When will it be your birthday?" etc. etc. - usually when it was nowhere near. And it stayed up for two years and they really used it to anticipate, oh, it will be warm enough for the pool soon or hey, it'll be time to pick apples soon or whatever. I think I had a blog post about it when we took it down... yep... https://farrarwilliams.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/preschool-homeschooling-the-calendar/ Anyway, the daily things were okay, but it was having the big picture up that helped my kids most. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pehp Posted April 13, 2015 Share Posted April 13, 2015 Here's what I do, but I am a minimalist! I get a blank calendar half-page (maybe on the Donna Young site? I can round it up and link to it if you're interested). Half the page is blank, half is a calendar. I write the month at the top and the days of the week, if needed (I can't remember if the days came pre-printed). The child decorates the page with seasonal stickers, drawings, etc. Then each day the child writes the appropriate numeral in the appropriate box (1, 2, 3 etc for each day of the month). I just hung it on the fridge or the dry erase board--it's just an 8x11 sheet of paper. I also recite days of the week and months of the year w/ my 4-5 year old until they have it down. It didn't take my son long and my daughter, who just turned 4, seems to have a pretty good handle on it too. You can put important dates or events on this as well, or fun things to look forward to, and cross days off...but I never really organized myself to do that. Even so, my son seems to comprehend calendars just fine now! HTH! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rachel Posted April 14, 2015 Share Posted April 14, 2015 We did some of that stuff back then, but it was the big picture that was hardest for my kids, so when they were maybe 4 yo (or just before?) we made a huge wall calendar that was the seasons and months in order. And then we put all the things they thought of to mark the time on there. So obvious things like holidays, but also things like apple and strawberry picking, going to the beach, their birthdays, the Renaissance festival, etc. because they were always asking, "When will it be Halloween?" "When will we pick strawberries again?" "When will it be your birthday?" etc. etc. - usually when it was nowhere near. And it stayed up for two years and they really used it to anticipate, oh, it will be warm enough for the pool soon or hey, it'll be time to pick apples soon or whatever. I think I had a blog post about it when we took it down... yep... https://farrarwilliams.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/preschool-homeschooling-the-calendar/ Anyway, the daily things were okay, but it was having the big picture up that helped my kids most. That's a great idea! This would be wonderful for my younger children. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ALB Posted April 14, 2015 Share Posted April 14, 2015 We also did some of the things from Confessions of a Homeschooler, but I found that hers has more detail than we necessarily wanted to cover everyday. We narrowed it down to: - day of the week - today's date - weather (and we did sing the weather song) - months of the year (singing to the Macarena tune) We were using Saxon math at the time which has a very thorough calendar section every day. Since I won't be using Saxon next time around, I will just try to incorporate some of the ideas like writing a number for each school day on a hundreds chart and then coloring every 10 orange when we get to it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aiden Posted April 14, 2015 Author Share Posted April 14, 2015 Thank you all for your suggestions! I'll check them out :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarah0000 Posted April 14, 2015 Share Posted April 14, 2015 I just use a dollar store calendar, recite months and days of the week poems, and explain the concept when I date his journal entries. He's a young three so hasn't learned it yet, but I figured after a couple years he'll get it just doing this. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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