When I have visitors in my classroom, I usually get several questions about our calendar routine so I wanted to do a little break down of my routine and share it with all of you!
During calendar time, we cover MANY different skills. So many that when I started to type the entire routine, it made for one loooooooong post! Because of this, I broke it up into two different posts. So without further ado, here is part one of two of our calendar routine.
Here is a look at our "calendar area"
It may seem like a lot, but once we get into the routine, calendar time seriously only takes about 10 minutes and is completely student lead!
First we begin with the days of the week.
A student comes up and points to each day of the week as we sing "The Days of the Week Song" to the tune of the Adams Family.
Then we practice the skill of passing time by identifying yesterday, today, and tomorrow. We sing a song about yesterday, today, and tomorrow to the tune of Frere Jacques that goes like this:
Today is (insert day)
Today is (insert day)
All day long
All day long
Yesterday was (insert day)
Yesterday was (insert day)
Tomorrow will be (insert day)
Tomorrow will be (insert day)
Let's have fun!
Let's have fun!
After I have taught alliteration, we usually practice the skill by having 2 or 3 students come up with a word that has the same beginning sound as the day of the week. (Friday, fish, football)
Next, we move on to the months of the year. I have my months on these little cupcakes.
I usually have paper candles with students' names and the date of their birthday on the cupcake with their birth month. Then, I take down their candle and add it to the calendar in the pocket with their birthday. Somehow I totally forgot about the candles until around December this year (whoops) so we just added birthdays to the calendar as they came!
Aaaanyway, back to the calendar routine! Another students comes up and points to the months of the year as we all stand up and do the "Months of the Year Macarena"
We then name the month that we are in and practice counting how many syllables are in the name of the month.
After that, another student volunteer comes up and leads the class by identifying the pattern on the calendar and extending the pattern to find today's date.
I usually try to find or make calendar pieces that go along with our theme. I also start the school year with a simple AB pattern and then make the patterns increasingly more difficult as the year goes.
The students will identify the pattern by shape (UFO, astronaut, astronaut, rocket), Letter (ABBC), and then number (starting at 1 and ending at the date). Using that information, they extend the pattern by predicting what comes next and adding that piece to the calendar.
After we have our date, another student comes up and updates the 10 frames so that they match our date.
As the year progresses, we use the 10 frame to practice different skills such as subitizing, counting by 10's, and figuring out how many more days until 10, 20, or 30.
If you are interested, here is a link to some free printables I created that you can include in your own calendar routine. Just click on the picture below :)
We also count days in school, practice place value, number ID, tally marks, counting by 2's, 5's, 10's, weather, and positional words! Want to see more? Click here for part 2!
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