Cute Calendar Work

There is some debate over whether calendar is really developmentally appropriate for preschoolers, so I might as well add my two cents.  I do calendar every day for a couple of different reasons.  The days of the week and the months of the year seem like fairly abstract concepts, but when I show the children what they look like on the calendar, they can visualize what all of these words mean.  Number recognition is also something that a lot of my students struggle with, especially now that my Pre-K kiddos are getting into the teens and beyond, the more opportunities that I can come up with for them to use those numbers, the better, so we do calendar.

My students look forward to this part of the day, and they will remind me if we don't get to it right away.  They are at the point where they know the days of the week, but not necessarily the order that they go in, so they love to take their turn telling me what yesterday was, what today is, and what tomorrow will be (and what better way to practice past, present, and future tenses?).

I try to make this part of the day interactive, and I recently found free printable calendars by one of my favorite bloggers (Mollie at Wild Olive) - and the dates are done in dashed lines, perfect for tracing.  I print one calendar for each one of my students, and they each have their own clipboard to keep their calendar on.  Every day we do calendar, then they have to find the date on their calendar, and trace it.

Here are some photos of their January calendars (we got a late start due to the weather):

And here is a link to the February Calendar at Wild Olive!