Calendar work with Preschoolers

For many classrooms calendar is an essential part of the daily routine, and while I won’t go into the argument of whether this is developmentally appropriate or not, I do want to show you all something that we have in our classroom that the children love.

When we began our birthday project, the first thing that we put up was a birthday calendar – each month got its own piece of paper with each child’s birthday, the birthdays are colored in so that the children can easily recognize which days are birthdays. This has helped the children really visualize the year and understand when their own birthdays are.

We use it like a timeline, we are able to show them which day it is today, and where their birthday is, so they can visualize the amount of time. They are also able to locate the other children’s birthdays, and show each other how long it is before their birthday.

Another thing that we did was color all of the holidays a different color than the birthdays, so the the children can easily see which important days are birthdays and which are holidays, as well as when their birthdays are in relation to Christmas, Easter, and Halloween.

Our students love this calendar and refer to it numerous times throughout the day. The parents also love it because they can double check the things that their children are telling them. Our kids are constantly having pretend birthday parties, so this definitely helps parents differentiate when the children are talking about pretend play and actual birthdays.