Any other teachers out there excited about a fresh start, new activities/curriculum, or even new décor for the new year? I am 110% that nerdy teacher who gets pumped about changing bulletin boards. Fair warning. 😀
Our homeschool shelves got a makeover today too, with teacher things on the left and student things on the right. I love it! It will probably be a mess again in a couple of weeks, but I still love it! ❤
With the beginnings that come with a new year, I thought our calendar board needed a bit of freshening up. I spent a good hour today organizing and stapling and getting excited about my daughter’s daily calendar time!
Calendar time seems to be one of those activities that has endless possibilities for fine-tuning to fit every child/family’s needs. Our board right now is geared toward a Pre-K/K age group, and it’s very simplistic. I love it, and wanted to share a little about what we do for Calendar time every day.
This is our calendar board. For the past year and a half we used a smaller piece of cardboard (decorated with pink duct tape, per dear daughter’s request) :). Today I decided I’d make better use of a real bulletin board I already had and wasn’t using. With a bit of snipping and taping, the regular calendar activities fit just fine on it, even though the board is a bit smaller than the previous one.
Now that our new board is set up, I’m excited to dive back into our calendar routine.
In the mornings after breakfast, we start with “Today is…” by manipulating the day of the week and date number cards. We have a today, yesterday and tomorrow card. My daughter always moves each card so they match to the correct day. We keep the extra cards in a special spot in her desk. If it’s a day when we need to change the month or add a holiday card, it seems so much more special and fun!
After moving the cards, we state the whole date together as follows: Today is Tuesday, January 3. (We haven’t added the 2017 part yet!) After stating the whole date, she moves the blocks on our block calendar. She loves doing this!
To end our simple calendar time we sing a couple of calendar songs. The Days of the Week song can be found here and is sung to the familiar French tune Alouette. The Months of the Year song can be found here and is sung to the tune of Ten Little Indians. If it’s the beginning of a new season or there’s an upcoming holiday we occasionally add a song or poem that fits the theme.
And that’s it! That is our entire calendar system. I know that as time passes, we’ll need to reimagine our process to suit our needs, which is the beauty of calendar time, but for now, we’re enjoying this short and sweet routine that begins most of our days.
Any fun or new changes to your routine day this year?
❤
That’s it.
a fresh brewed faith 