Daily Calendar Routine in Preschool and Kindergarten
Welcome to Thoughtful Thursday! Today I’m going to share my thoughts on using a daily calendar in the early childhood classroom.
Depending on what grade and what type of program you work in you may or may not be aware of the great calendar debate. There are those who are opposed to using a daily calendar in early childhood classrooms and have deemed it not developmentally appropriate. There are others who feel that using a calendar is more about teaching concepts and using the calendar as a vehicle to do so, I fall firmly into the latter camp.
Above you can see a picture of the calendar area in my classroom. I have listed below some of the skills that can be taught during calendar time each day:
- Beginning Sounds
- Syllables
- Left to Right Progression
- Return Sweep
- One-to-One
- Ordinal Numbers
- Patterns
- Number Identification
- Linear Progression
- Subitizing
- Colors
- Shapes
I use the calendar to talk about the beginning sounds in the days of the week. We do the same thing with the months. I also clap the syllables in the day of the week and month of the year. As my leader points to the days on the calendar we are practicing return sweep. When the leader points to the days on the number line we are practicing linear progression of numbers.
Whether your calendar time is appropriate or not depends on your expectations, if you expect your students to learn the sequence of the days, memorize the months in order, and understand how the calendar works that is not an appropriate expectation for young children. If your expectation is for students to learn basic math and literacy skills through the calendar then it can be very appropriate.
Stay tuned for Featured Friday tomorrow, I will be reviewing one of my favorite teacher products and announcing the latest giveaway!
