Calendar Time

How we start our day


In our house we start our school day like many other families around the globe with Calendar Time. Calendar Time involves a number of small tasks that we do together as a family which centre around the learning of all things relating to the calendar and a lot more besides. It's a wonderful way to start the day together and sends a clear signal that learning time has begun, it also allows you to review concepts such as timetables and lots of other information as well. So this is our current set up:

I use an A1 sized cork board that I bought from Amazon. On the board currently is:

• The alphabet both upper and lower case, which runs along the top.
• Left hand side at the top: The year, this is wipeable, so I can change it
• Left hand side: The actual calendar with days and dates, this is wipeable I simply rewrite it every month. I know some people have one printed and laminated for each month but I do not want to have to store this.
• Underneath the calendar is the Today, Tomorrow and Yesterday task. This has been very useful with both of my children in helping them organise these concepts in  their minds.
• Lastly down the left hand side we have the season we are in, which is changed as needed.
• The middle section has the time at the top, this is wipeable and my oldest has to look at the actual clock and write the time.
• Underneath that is a montessori printable, I cannot remember where I got this from as I have had it for 3 years. It has all of the months on it in a sun, with a poem in the middle that explains how the earth goes around the sun and another year is done.
• On the right we have the weather chart with has 25 days on it, as we do not school on a weekend. 
• Underneath that is a wipeable Address and telephone number task, because we are learning these at the moment.
• Lastly at the bottom is a Nanny Countdown sheet for each of them, so that they can cross off each day until my Mum arrives from Spain.

Now that I have given you that massive list of what is on the calendar, this is how we use it.  When school starts a get out the board, Nuh has to get out his 'calendar notebook' and Zany gets her 'morning work folder' out.
The calendar notebook has all of the months in it, one to each page. Nuh has to fill in the dates and any important holidays that month, it also has sections for which season we are in and asks which order the month is in. I cannot give you this as it is not my creation and I do not know where I got it from it has no information on it, (I am planning on making my own though so watch this space, when I have I will give it as a freebie).
Zany's Morning Work folder has a selection of wipeable printables, one for each day where she has to trace the word for the day, colour in the date and then copy the date number and write the word for that number. She also has a sheet for each month with the dates on it that she has to trace over the month name and each date. She also has a weather tracker for each day on it. I got this from confessions of a homeschooler. It is perfect for her ability range and makes her feel included, whilst teaching her valuable skills about time.

So on with the calendar time, Nuh fills in his calendar notebook then fills out the time on the board, whilst Zany is tracing her day and colouring out her date in her folder. Then they both do the weather tracking, Nuh on the board and Zany on her monthly chart in her folder.
The Today, Tomorrow and Yesterday task is next, they take turns at this. Even though Nuh knows this he still likes to do it.
Nuh adds another pin to the Sun with the months on if appropriate whilst we read the poem, thus reinforcing the fact that a year is completed each time the earth orbits the sun. We change the season if needed at this point.
Next up is the memorisation of our Address and Telephone number, both of them do this.
Lastly at the moment we cross of a day on our Nanny Countdown.
Thats it folks, that's how we do calendar time, it takes approximately 10 minutes in all.

If you would like my Calendar Time printables you can get them by clicking on either the image or the link below:

Free Calendar Pack

Counting up to 10

Spring Counting Pack

I made a spring counting pack for Zany with lots of montessori based tasks, she really appreciates a bit of colour and prettiness. The pack has got about 5 activities in it all based on numbers one to 10. However some of the activities can be used in multiple ways such as the number cards and the flower making mats, which allows you to use pom poms, buttons or playdough. If you would like to purchse the pack you can head on over to my Teacher Pay Teachers store. Simply click on the widget:

 

There are number of different activities like sequencing, one to one correspondence a game and the Montessori Memory Game which is excellent for recall of numbers and amounts.

set up on tray

This is the number sequencing task, where you have to put the flowers in the correct order accorging to their number by glueing them on a strip.
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This is the completed task, with all of the flowers glued in the correct order.

The next task in the pack was to make a booklet of ladybirds with the nubers one to ten, zany had to add the correct amount of spots to each ladybird.

Dynamic Addition

Dynamic Addition in Montessori means exchanging or carrying on numbers during an addition sum. This process as with all Montessori concepts starts with the concrete material in this case the Golden Beads and then moves to abstract materials using simply pen and paper and no manipulatives. In between there are various other materials that can be used to aid this process such as the stamp game, and the small or large bead frame.

Nuh has been able to perform quite large addition sums since his was about 5 using this method, and moved to abstract at about 6. However I have found that he constantly needs refreshing on these concepts otherwise he forgets. I think that this is because Montessori Maths uses a spiral approach to teaching and not true mastery. It is something that I am thinking deeply about at the moment any way. This is a piece of work completed with the manipulatives notice how he is not carrying the numbers on by writing them on the sheet. This is because he can simply count how many units, ten bars, hundred squares and thousand cubes he has by changing them out for each other as required.

We use the stamp game paper for Dynamic addition sums, as it is easy and is colour coded if you need that, Nuh does not I have used black and white versions and he can perform the sums the same. He definitely has a solid grasp of place value, even if he does not recognise that term for it. It is important I feel to note that when beginning carrying forward or dynamic addition you start with the Golden bead material then slowly move to abstract using smaller sums than in the thousands. So you might start by using sums that only include 10's and units, alternatively you can start by only exchanging one column at a time, so the units. When this is accomplished with ease you can then add in exchanging of the 10 column, then 100. The point is to start slow and build up, don't just go straight in with a full exchange of all three columns.

Moving towards Abstraction 

The stamp game uses coloured wooden squares with a value printed on them, instead of counting out beads to make your addend you simply count out the number of tiles you need to each column. In the example below, Nuh has two addends 3456 and 1235, he needs to find the total obviously. It is good practise to use a ruler between the two addends, however we used the lid of the box and a clipboard to differentiate.

When both addends are laid out it is time to put them together, just like you do with the golden beads.  You can then count each column starting with the units and make the necessary exchanges:

Notice how the units column has more than 10, Nuh counted up to 10 then moved the 10 tiles to one side, he then put them back in the box and retrieved a 10 blue tile.

Now all the exchanging is complete, in this instance just one exchange, he can write his answer on the paper.








Abstraction 

In the picture below he completed this work without manipulatives, so he has written the number that he is carrying forward in each column. He has a solid grasp of the fact that once you have more than 10 in any column you must carry forward.