Location: indoor

Materials: calendar materials

It is completely up to you if you want to include calendar as part of your daily routine with your children. As with many things in early childhood education, there are mixed opinions about the value of doing a calendar with preschoolers. Here are some ideas to help you decide for yourself:

• Young children do not yet have a good sense of time: an hour ago versus yesterday versus three months ago. Regularly doing a calendar can be a concrete way to look at time and talk about recent events as well as upcoming events.
• The calendar can provide a fun way to work on patterns. Buy or create calendar number pieces with different patterns and invite kids to guess what shape or color will come next based on the pattern.
• It can also provide a daily way to practice counting and number recognition. Count the days and decide what number comes next. Challenge kids to identify which calendar piece that is.
• The calendar is another opportunity to create a "job" in the classroom. You can have a daily calendar helper who gets to solve the problems and hang the calendar piece.
• Use the calendar to talk about upcoming events like birthdays, holidays, and field trips. It can be helpful to give kids warning for anything that might break their normal routine.

Most of these things can be accomplished another way. So if you decide not to do a calendar, you can easily find other opportunities to practice counting, patterns, etc. It's totally up to you! If it feels like work, then maybe don't do it. And as with most things, you'll figure out pretty quickly if it's something your kids enjoy doing.