Calendar Time

[WImom]

I have one 2.5y and the rest are 3-4y olds. We sing a short good morning song, then a weather song and our circle time helper tells us the weather and puts up the picture. I then give then the calendar day (today 30) and If it's my 4y olds I ask them what the number is and if it's a younger child then everyone helps them if it's a larger number. They then get to pick if they want to clap, jump or do rocket that many times (rocket, the crouch down and then when we get to the number ie: today-30) they jump up.
Then I will say that yesterday was _____, what is today? Then we all say together what day of the week, month and date (ie: Today is Tuesday, October 30). I then do some theme songs, felt board or movement activity with our theme or do an open ended discussion about our theme. Then we sing either days of the week or month song. Do another theme song or game and then story time. Then goodbye song and they are off to wash hands for snack. It takes about 10-20m depending on what we are doing.

[EntropyControlSpecialist]

My kids also freak. I had to do calendar/weather/circle time at parent's night out last week! ::

Last month I added in how are you feeling poster with pictures of kids feeling (sad, mad, tired, etc) and the kids point to which picture they are feeling, we all make a sympathetic face and then we talk about why they feel that way, how they can feel better (or talk about what makes others happy, too) and that is the new favorite around here.

Plus, parents stinking love the kids singing the days of the week, months of the year, numbers, etc in english AND spanish.

:: Hilarious! The kids always try to go sit down and eat breakfast during our Parent Night Out events at 5:00PM.

I agree. My parents love the songs, too. Even if they only catch 1 english or 1 spanish word and the rest sounds jumbled together (2-year-olds!) they love it.

[EntropyControlSpecialist]

Thanks for the responses. As with anything, we all have our personal philosophies and ideas on how to do things. I plan to continue calendar time as they do enjoy it, they just don't behave so well, but maybe I need to adjust my expectations. Even though they seem bored at times, they still ask if we are going to do calendar time, so I think it is something I don't want to discontinue. I think I will try to mix some of the active time as daycare suggested and possibly change the time that we do calendar. Thanks again.

When we sing the days of the week we hold up our fingers and count from 1 to 7. When we count the days of the month we do frog jumps, jumping jacks, etc. We do a jump for each number we count. When we do various other things during circle time we will make up movements to do (sitting down) or clap with each word.

[Leanna]

I TOTALLY agree with Crystal. Young children, even 4 and 5 year olds, just do not have the ability to grasp the concept of time. Have you ever seen a circle time where the teacher asks "What day is it?" and the children start calling out random days until finally one of them happens to say the right one? I have witnessed this even in May and June (meaning they have been doing this everyday all year and still do not know).
In my program we do discuss days of the week and calendars but we do it in a way that is meaningful for the children. Here are some of the things we do:
- We have a calendar on a whiteboard and every month we write down important things that will be happening: birthdays, field trips, days off, etc.
- We have a consistent routine that so the children begin to get familiar with the order of days and talk about them (i.e. Every Thursday we go to the park, Fridays are music lessons, etc.).
-We read lots of stories where the days of the week are part of the story. There is a good list of these on the Early Literacy Connection website.
-We do have circle time everyday but we do not include a ritualistic calendar/weather discussion. We sing songs, read stories, do flannel stories, fingerplays, have a discussion, play games, etc.

If the kiddos are bored now, think about how bored they will be in Kindergarten when they have been doing calendar for 3-4 years already!

[kendallina]

If you're bored with calendar, then they're probably bored with it and I would say it's probably good to take a break. I find 'calendar time' to be monotonous and boring myself, which is mainly why I don't do it.

In my preschool (4-5 yr olds), we have a helper of the day that rotates and is always written on our calendar. So, every morning we look at the calendar for a second to see who the helper of the day is (this is very exciting to them) and when I forget to look, the kids are usually pulling the calendar out to figure it out themselves. When we do look at who the helper is, I usually will say, "Today is Monday, October 28th and the helper of the day is...." just to get them familiar with those words. They are learning the days of the week and some of the kids are learning the months and know which month it is.

I have found that attaching a "Helper of teh Day" to the calendar helps make it meaningful for them and they enjoy the little bit with calendar that we do.

When we do weather theme, I usually have the children do a more traditional calendar time, where they put the weather symbols on the day and that usually happens for a month, but, like I said, I get bored with it pretty easily and so do they.

Hope that helps!