Calendar Routines

Calendar has become one of my favorite routines in the classroom! There are so many opportunities for teaching points, ways to build classroom community and to stress the importance of organization.  This year I am especially excited because I have added some new interactive math manipulatives! I find making anything more interactive is sure to increase engagement!

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We start each day with morning meeting, followed by calendar. At the beginning of the year, I lead it and model the appropriate "calendar language." Eventually once the class is ready, it becomes a classroom job to lead it. We start with "Today is (day of the week), (month) and then (date) as we add our number card. Next, we move to days of the week, weather and season. Nothing too fancy! 

This year I am going to add magnetic ten frames for the date of the month count. Each day of the month, we will add another spot to our ten frame. This will provide additional exposure to decomposing and composing tens, a first grade CCSS standard. For my friends who could use a little stretch, I plan to also use the 3 tens frames to compose and decompose the numbers 28-31, depending on the month. This will get us excited about starting or ending a month. Because lets me honest... as if changing the month headers doesn't get them excited enough! 

I purchased the magnetic tens frames from Amazon. It comes in a set of 4 giant frames and two magnetic counters. Interested? You can find them here.  

 This year I have also added magnetic base ten blocks and coins to our routine. We will build ones, tens and hundreds by adding/trading base ten blocks as necessary. My goal for using these manipulatives each morning is to prevent any misconceptions about the difference between a "ten" and a "one" and also to get students into the routine of building and making trades as necessary. Also, it is great skip counting practice! Speaking of skip counting, what better way to skip count than with money? Each day we add a penny and practice counting our change. I put on my teacher voice when a day comes that we can "go to the bank" because we're richy,  rich, RICH! (gotta love Junie B.). I spend a great deal of time these days teaching into the concept that more coins does not always mean more money! I even look for students to tell me how they can make a trade in more than one way. 

If you're interested in adding magnetic manipulatives to your math instruction, you can find the money with out bills here, with dollar bills here and base ten blocks here!

I save the number of the day for last because there are so many ways that this can lead me straight into my math instruction! Each day we take a straw and more it to our "ones" bucket (not shown). We get really excited on a day that we get to take a colorful rubber band to make a "ten." 

I put on my best teacher voice at this time and do my very best to make exciting, as I hope it carries the importance of not being able to have "ten" in the ones place. I spent a year tracking down all these different prints and colors and found most of them at Michaels, Dollar Tree and Target. 

My calendar set was purchased from the lovely Maria Manore from Kinder-Craze. You can find all of her fabulous goodies here.