Capturing Calendar

My Kindergarten Calendar Kit

Hello all!  I was away at a gaming convention for a week, and it really inspired me to start working on my children's comic book game.  Well, after having a week's vacation I had to come back to my favorite pastime: stalking blogs.  I was really excited to see that Castles and Crayons was doing a Schedule Spotlight Series #2 - Calendar Linky Party.

I do not do my calendar first thing in the morning.  I have my calendar at the beginning of math time, which is usually later in the day.  Since my kiddos get a little tired in the second part of the day, I try to do a lot of movement songs during calendar.  I usually start with a song by Jack Hartmann off the CD "Rhythms and Rhymes for Special Times".  This CD has a different song for each month of the school year, focusing on holidays during that month and special things you see, hear and do.  I love using this CD because it keeps things new and fresh, and it really gives the students some information about each month in the year.  My kids also really enjoy Jack Hartmann's song "Today, Yesterday and Tomorrow".  I have the kids use hand gestures, as well as feet and head, to show "today" (feet together), "yesterday" (left foot and left hand out, and look to the left), and "tomorrow" (right foot and right hand out, and look to the right).

I also have the calendar helper move the card to the correct spot and use a pointer to show the right spaces. The calendar person usually switches every week, along with the rest of my jobs.  I also have somebody working the CD player, which I started this year, and actually the students are really great with  it.  They only need to know two buttons: play and stop.  I usually have them stop the songs to ask pertinent questions such as "What numbers are the 'neighbors' of today's date?", "Is 19 larger or smaller than 10?", and "How many 1's are in that number? How many 10's?".

No calendar time would be complete without doing Dr. Jean's "Macarena Months" song.  With the new Common Core standards focusing more on writing, I added a song where the students air-write the numbers, called "Chant and Write", also by Dr. Jean.  I've also noticed that so many kindergarten students write their numbers backwards, so this song really helps them to see it, hear it, and feel it.

I'm looking forward to hearing what other people do for their calendar time.  By the way, is anyone else working summer school this summer?  I am so excited to be going back in July!