Preschool Calendar time

I decided to take a page from my school teacher days, and use some things that work there. So, every morning as we start school time we have preschool calendar time and I have a helper for the day. This is a cornerstone of our daily homeschool preschool.

(I’m editing this after the fact, and will add commentary looking back now that they’re in elementary school, also there are affiliate links)

My helper gets to point to the days as we count them in our Monthly Calendar Pocket Chart. Next, my helper for the day passes out our Felt Story Board.  My helper draws a number and each of them puts that number of flannel objects on their board. When I worked at a teacher supply store I got the Beginners Counting Felt Set. Each kid gets to count it out on their board.

When they think they have the right number we count together, and when it is right we hold it up for everyone to see.

Next, we do a pattern for the day. I figured out the cushions we’ve been leaning against are splendid little flannel boards, so I added it into our learning time. Again my helper gets to figure out the pattern for the day.

Finally, we also have an alphabet sticker book that we add a new sticker to each day. At first, I was only having the helper put a sticker in, but I figured out that was limiting the other kiddos chance to learn more. So they get a sticker and have to figure out what letter the picture starts with.

From there, and this was only added into our calendar time as my boys were getting ready for kindergarten, we build words. We used very simple words like cat or bat and built the words. If you don’t have the flannel board letters, you can use this homemade spelling board.

When we’re done with calendar time, we head off to complete our activities for the day. Today it was working on our current nursery rhyme, which I’ll finish posting about tomorrow. I was going to post on that today, but I forgot to get a picture of the completed project.

Other things I have done with our calendar time:

• shape or color of the day
• alphabet chant
• poem for the week
• colors
• weather
• number of days in school (great to do on a hundred chart)>> we would put a sticker in our books for each day of school
• write the day of the month in individual calendars
• draw a picture for the theme of the week (from our Kindergarten program: My Father’s World)
• make a letter of the week from Handwriting without Tears pieces
• make letter sticker pages
• find the letter (I had: capital letter puzzle, letter cards laminated from workbooks)>> for someone starting to learn the alphabet decrease the number of letters to choose from

More Preschool Ideas

• You CAN homeschool preschool
• Preschool Monster Unit
• Me on the Map: reading a map
• How do trees grow preschool science lesson
• Very Hungry Caterpillar preschool lesson