I plan on doing a full post in a bit to show how we do calendar time with all of our kiddos in the morning, but wanted to share a few of the ‘preschool’ targeted resources that we are doing this week. Our kids range in age from 3 to 8 so we have a little something for everyone, but there is a definite ‘trickle-down’ effect in what the younger ones pick up while the older ones are doing things.
We review our calendar and board daily. I’ve found our calendar is a great tool for working on the obvious {days of the week, months of the year, and counting from 1-30}, but we also use it to work on other concepts ~ patterns, identify letters, counting down to a special event, etc…
Our calendar hangs on one wall in our dining room ~ you know you all are super jealous of the painter’s tape holding the month title up on the wall. Try to contain yourself {grins}.
March is one of those tough months for our pattern cards. When Easter falls in March we use some little bunny cutouts that are pink on one side and white on the other and I let Zachary pick the pattern for the month {i.e. white, white, pink or white/pink/white/pink} and we follow that pattern for the month. This month we’re using a shamrock with a number card.
Our calendar routine usually goes a little something like this:
- What number and color come next in the pattern
- What day of the week is it?
- Put the number card in and count up to that number
- Sing the days of the week song
- What month is it? spell it out {it starts with a capital letter}
- What is the date? Thursday, March 4th
- Maybe sing the months of the year song. :)
We then move on to another board on a nearby wall. Zachary doesn’t do all of the things on this, but there are several things that he does along with the girls. I PROMISE I’ll be doing a post on the rest of the layout of our board, but the current ‘Zachary-focused’ activities are in the top center of the board {skip counting}, top right {weekly Bible verse} and also the bottom right {weather}.
Each week Zachary has a different verse that we focus on from Awana {he is using Sparks book 1} and his verse is in the top right corner {right now he is learning the books of the New Testament}.
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The Skip Counting Charts are something that I put together recently for our kids. I have one for all of the numbers going up to 12, but right now we’re working on counting by 5’s {which he did all the way up to 60 today}. We are doing 5’s so that he can grasp the value of nickels and count them out on his own.
The weather graph on the bottom lets us track the weather for 5 days and see how many different types of weather we had that week {rainy, stormy, overcast, sunny, snowy, partly cloudy and windy}.
So…in a not-so-much-nutshell, those are a few of the things we are doing during our calendar/morning time. I’m hoping to share a little more in the next few days with you all too, but for now ~ link up and tell me what you are doing with your preschoolers!
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