Calendar Time

I found a really wonderful website that has a ton of resources for stay at home moms, as well as homeschooling moms.  Confessions of a Homeschooler has created her own preschool curriculum (which is free), a ton of printable ideas to help you organize your home, your schooling, your chores,  your time. 

I have been working on creating a functional board for Calendar Time over the past few weeks.  This is something I have tried to implement, but failed several times before.  This time, I don't think I will fail because of the great ideas and resources I have found in this website.

I printed a lot of ideas for Calendar time, laminated them, and glued  or velcroed them to a large, sturdy white board.  Because we are trying to sell our house, I did not want to mount this on a wall, so I can hide it for showings.  But, then I discovered that since I'm not mounting it on the wall...I have the back side of the board to use too.

There is velcro on the back of nearly every piece....that was the worst part of the project, but if you have fingernails, then it will be easier for you.  I love the velcro idea because once I created this thing...it can be used over and over!

So, here is what we have....
~A daily calendar, with month titles that can be changed.
~To the right is an envelope that has the days of the week.  We put this up every day so the girls can see the name (Friday) and hopefully begin to recognize it.  Inside this envelope, we also have a collection of straws.  Each day receives a straw.  Once we have 10 straws, then they get bundled to teach Nicole how to count by 10s, and add.  For example, today is the 11th...so we already know that we have 10 straws in our bundle, we don't need to count them, we will add one more straw (unbundled) and know that we have 11 straws total. 
~Below the calendar is our Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow section. 
~Above the straws we will chart the weather outside.  Honestly, I thought this might be silly because most every day is sunny in Florida, however, this week...we have had a variety of weather.  On Friday, we will transfer our daily weather into a graph (which you will see in a moment)
~Next, we have our personal information.  The girls need to learn our full address, our phone number, and then emergency numbers, like 911 and our cell phone numbers.
~Finally, we have our Bible memory verse.  Right now, we are memorizing Ephesians 6, because that is what Nicole's CC group is doing.  I'm excited to add this into our daily routine.  Almost all of the memory verses I know, I learned when I was Nicole's age (dad, remember when I recited my verses on the way to Pre-k4, at each stop light?)  Because I laminated the page, I can use a dry-erase marker, and then erase it each week.  I'm not sure how long this will last, I may need to use a sheet protector eventually.

Now, on the back of the board, we have several sheet protectors so that I can put information in and out as it is needed.
~Well, first is a season's chart, which doesn't change much.  But, my girls need to learn that it's not always summer here, even though it feels like it.
~To the right of the season's chart is a personal character curriculum that I printed from Confessions of a Homeschooler.  It's a four day study on different character traits that young people deal with (who am I kidding, old people deal with it too!). 
~To the far right is our weather graph.  You can see that last week, we only had sunny days.  This week though we will color in blocks with other weather.      This is a great math introduction to the kids.  We will fill this chart out for the month.
~The bottom left sheet has our maps from Nicole's CC class. Right now she is learning where countries, seas, rivers, mountains and cities are in Europe, so that map is showing.  I also have a world map behind it.  The other great thing about using sheet protectors is that you can write on them with a dry erase marker, and then just wipe off :-)
~Finally, we have our weekly CC info.  So, now when we do calendar time, it can transition right into review of our CC memorization!

Confessions of a Homeschooler also lays out how she does calendar time and gave me a few ideas on helping the kids learn basic information. Here is our basic routine.
1. We pray
2. Say the pledge of allegiance (I have a small flag we got at a parade or something, the girls take turns holding it)
3. We sing the months of the year song, to the tune of "The Macarena".  We also do the macerana hand motions.
4. We sing the days of the week song to the tune of "The Addams Family"
5. We go through the board and hit each item.  The girls take turn adding the dates and other information.

I am really happy with my calendar.  It's compact and very useful. The girls seem to enjoy it, and Nathan will too as he gets older.  There are some really neat Calendars out there that this is sort of copied from, but they can be upwards of $50.  I believe I spent $8 or so on the supplies, and spent about 2 hours putting it together (most of that time was tearing itty bitty pieces of Velcro)