Calendar

Spotlight Series Part 2: Calendar! 

In my class we do calendar as part of morning meeting. When the students come to the carpet we do the calendar first. We flip over the new date card, say what today is, yesterday was, and what tomorrow will be. Then we count the days of school using the straw place value method. Then we go over our special for the day and who the helper is for that day. Then we talk about what the "dash date" (6-17-13) looks like and how to read and say it. We also do the Starfall calendar until Christmas. I LOVE this calendar because it completely interactive. The students love going up to the Promethean board to control the calendar. It allows you to add birthdays, special occasions, and every 1st grader's favorite~~a lost tooth! After Christmas my kiddos pretty much know the calendar and they decided on their own that they are "too old for the computer calendar."

This year I am thinking about adding another component to my calendar. At at first grade math workshop in our district we had a chance to talk about out math routines. One teacher said that her class counts the days of school using a ten frame. At first I thought "well thats great for the first ten days, but then what?" She said she adds a ten frame every ten days until the last day of school is reached. So, she uses a lot of wall space for her 18 ten frames BUT how great for a constant review and skip counting! We hit on ten frames for maybe a week but what a good way to talk about them all year. You could skip count by 5s and 10s all year. I am going to add that into my calendar routine next year...bet start clearing off some space ;)

Our calendar time before Christmas takes about 10 minutes and about 5 after Christmas. I love this time because I think it is so beneficial to them. It works the math part of their brain that doesn't require any difficult skills. Does this look like your calendar time? I would love to hear some new ideas!