Calendar

When I taught third grade in an inner city school, there was no money to buy fancy supplies, so I learned to be quite resourceful. I made my own calendar.

Now that I want do calendar time with Bear, I needed a calendar. I didn't feel like spending money on something I could make so here is what I did to make Bear's calendar.

Materials Needed
poster board
30 paper clips
black sharpie
markers
x-acto knife
white cardstock or construction paper
2 sheets each of 4 colors of construction paper (I chose a different color for each North American season)

Directions

• Measure your posterboard and draw lines to create a grid of 7 squares across and 5 squares down, leaving a top row wide enough to write in the week.
  
• Outline the grid with a black sharpie.
• Write the names of the week in the language of your choice (I have the French and Spanish days of the week along the bottom of the calendar.)
• Make a tiny slit (big enough to slide a paper clip through) at the top of each square of the calendar.
• Slide a paper clip in each slit such that half the paper clip is on the front of the calendar.
• Cut the white construction paper into squares that fit on the squares drawn on the calendar. Write the numbers one to 31 on these squares. I made mine all black, but plan on making some red numbers later to do patterning of numbers during calendar time.
  
• Cut the colored construction paper into strips and write the months of the year on these. I used blue for the winter months, green for Spring, yellow for summer and orange for Fall. I made my cards trilingual, something I would not be able to find in a store bought calendar.
  
• On some scraps squares of white construction paper I drew suns, clouds, wind, and raining clouds. Bear will clip a weather card to each day, then at the end of the month, we will lay them out in graph like fashion to see what kind of weather we had the most of in the month.
• On some other scraps write the words TODAY, YESTERDAY and TOMORROW. These can also be clipped to the calendar and changed daily.
  

I hung the months on the wall so that I can point to them while I sing her the song of the months of the year.
We've been singing the days of the week for a few months now and it will be nice to have a calendar to show Bear while we sing this. Bear will also get to participate by clipping each day's number to the calendar and by placing the weather and TODAY, YESTERDAY and TOMORROW card.

I know she really doesn't need to do calendar at 26 months, but I figured that I could introduce it and she could just pick it up as she is ready. I know a lot of these concepts are abstract even for a three year old; however, it builds routine into the day and I know she is really going to enjoy doing all the clipping of items onto the paperclips.