Calendar Routine in Preschool

calendar

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:

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!

6 thoughts on “Calendar Routine in Preschool”

  1. I love all the materials – alphabet chart, newsletter template, and other downloads that you gave information about.
    Thank You,
    Kelley

  2. hi! i love the look of your calendar center! i have a couple quick questions! how high does your number line go? and is it already up or do you add a number each day? also, what’s the poster hanging beside the bear number counting used for? it’s hard to tell from the picture! thanks for all the wealth of information you’re sharing with us all! 🙂

  3. Hi Becki: The number line goes along with the calendar so it only goes as high as the calendar each month. We add one number to the line each day so the students can see the linear progression of numbers. The poster of the bear is Number Bear, he displays one number each month starting with 2. Number Bear is part of our Everyday in Pre-K Calendar Math curriculum. The poster with the hands is also from the calendar math program and it’s called the Counting Hands to 100 Quilt. We color in one finger on the chart each day until we get to 100.

  4. Jennifer Sanders

    Quick question: Is Everyday in Pre-K Calendar Math the Pre-K portion of Everyday Math or is it a different program? Our school is adopting Everyday Math this year for Pre-K-5 and I have no idea what to expect!

  5. Yes, Everyday in _Pre-K is the pre-k version of the Everyday calendar math program so you should be receiving the one you see in the picture above- yipee!!! Just FYI, if it’s not in a pink box it’s not the pre-k version, sometimes the people higher up who do the ordering don’t know there is a different one for pre-k so put your foot down if it isn’t pink!

  6. The first thing I noticed about your math wall is the small bags hanging at the top. I’m assuming that they have to do with the months of the year. What are they exactly and how do you use them? I love you posts!

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