Pinterest happens to be my new drug of choice... a time wasting pit of pure awesomeness! I came across a calendar posted by Counting Coconuts, which I fell in love with. (Always give credit where credit is due, and this site has TONS of great ideas to play around with.) Since my kids are a range of ages, I had to modify the design to fit our needs- but you'll definitely see the similarities in design. Why mess too much with greatness?
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| Our Learning Calendar |
So much learning to be had here!
In the upper left-hand corner, hard to read here, but we have a decorated piece of paper covered with clear contact paper to make a birthday list for the month. Happy Birthday, USA!
Under the birthday list we have our season chart- currently summer. This is a simple task, we note when the seasons change on our calendar... but I tried to tie it even further. Behind the calendar itself we have outline the boarder using 4 colors: Orange for Fall, Blue for Winter, Green for Spring, and Yellow for Summer. The same colors boarder our season cards- and our months of the year names are color coordinated as well! You'll notice them along the right-hand side.
Under the seasons we track our weather... this is a multiple part project for our varying age ranges. The eldest child is responsible for checking the weather forecast for the day online, while the younger two look outside and make their own guesses for what the weather might be for the day. So far we've had a lot of sunny and stormy days... maybe someday we'll get to pull out some of the other cards that we thought of!
The 31 was pulled off for this picture, to show that we realize our calendar does not always need 31 days- and we have a place for these to go while not in use.
Finally, we are outer space nuts around here and we LOVE keeping track of the moon. We posted the important moon vocab under our moon-wheel to help remind us to use the proper terms. Our moon wheel moves daily in line with the moon's phases over the month! We (the kids) look up the moon-dates for the month and we mark them on our calendar as well, to help us keep the wheel in the right place.
Not only do we keep track of what day it is- but our fun pockets are color coordinated in line with the rainbow! Pink, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple! Each day we practice noting the days of the week in order, and note which is today, tomorrow, and yesterday. This is a Kindergarten lesson that the youngest needs. Our first grader goes one step further and discusses the weeks:
He is supposed to note something that is to happen THIS week, NEXT week, and something that we have already done LAST week. Our tabs move easily, as do our calendar dates and months thanks to some nifty little velcro tabs I found at Wal*Mart. The calendar itself is a restickable white-board mat that I found at Target... it is similar to this, but I only paid $10 for mine.
So much happening compiled onto one bulletin board- and we're having fun using it! It is exciting to be able to note important days and special events on our board for the kids- rather them trying to read mine... which is not always clear and concise for anyone other than ME!
To which allows me to end with my new Home School Motto: It's their world- let them own it.
