Calendar Time!

In this blog post we will look at some more of the pages in our calendar notebooks and how we use them to develop number sense. I wrote a blog post about a year ago about some of the other pages in our Student Calendar Notebook.  You can read that post here.

Monthly Tally and Hands Sheet

 This is our monthly tally and hands page. Each day the children add a tally mark and color one of the fingers. We explore how the number grows and the pattern created as we add one more each day.

 This is a great way to introduce 5's and 10's and how they work in our number system.

We photocopy the page and display it on our calendar. This way we can model what we want the children to do. 

For each part, tally and hands, we developed a set of deeper questions that would encourage thinking in our kids.  We made ourselves a flip book to help us remember these questions while we were DOING the calendar. It is hard to think of good questions on the spot.  The good thing, after repeatedly using this flip book, the questions became a part of us! We found we no longer needed that prompt. Our questions were now spot on!

Money

While money may or may not be one of your standards, it is easily used to teach many number concepts.  I added magnets to the back of some pennies and collected a cookie sheet. Each day I add a penny to the tray. We start over each month so there is never more than 31 pennies on the tray.

Here is the student calendar notebook page.  The children can record WHATEVER standard I am working on.  Do I want them to write the numeral and draw that many pennies? Do I want them to write the numeral and show me another way to make that much money? It all depends on the standard and the time of year.

Here are some of the activities that are included on the Money activity pages.

One fun activity that we play uses these simple toy picture cards with a price tag. I can draw a card from the bag, and ask the children to show me that much money. They can use a container of pennies to show me how many pennies I would need to purchase that toy.  I could select two cards and ask the children to add them together!

 

Dice Roll

Each day, as part of the calendar time, we roll dice.  You can collect a variety of dice. Some light up, some are large, some spin! Try different kinds to keep the interest high!  During the year I can change what I am doing. At the beginning of the year we could be counting or subitizing the dots. Later in the year we could add the dots together, count on, subtract, etc.

This is the updated Dice Roll page for the Student Calendar Notebook.

Again, we added questions to our flip book to ensure good quality questions.  All of these ideas are from the Student Calendar Notebook Unit.