Calendar Time
Updated with new calendar link: July 2024
I’m guilty of loving all things school items and a cute calendar is no exception. Over the years, I have used a few different calendars to help our children develop a sense of time and just depending on your space I have loved them all!
Wooden Calendar
One of my best friends found this calendar and compared to other wooden calendars on the market, this one is at a great price point so I knew we had to have it too. I love how small and simple it is and it comes with beautiful season, holiday, weather, and moon phases coins.
Wooden Calendar: I ordered a size small with all 46 coins. When I went to purchase, I made a note to the seller to include 2 extra white rings and red rings. We use the red ring to mark the current day and we use the two white rings to say “yesterday was and tomorrow is.” Extras to do this aren’t included so if you want to do the same, make sure to add a note!
By the way, I love to support small shops when I can and we can had an excellent experience with Onceli. Since it was coming from over seas I thought it’d take weeks, but last year I ordered it September 3 and had it by the 15th which I thought was fantastic service.
UPDATE July 2024: The original Etsy shop, Oncelli, that we purchased this calendar from looks like it is no longer available. I was able to find a nearly identical calendar so I have updated my links. A friend of mine ordered from this company and reported back a great experience.
Pocket Wall Calendar
This is the first calendar I bought! I had it hanging in our school room for a long time, but last summer we refreshed our school space and now have the wooden calendar in there. This pocket calendar comes with simple colored dates you can swap out each month, but I prepped another set because I love little touches of the seasons and holidays. We stuck this on the wall with some removable velcro so when we changed things up it was nice everything pulled off real easily.
Seasonal and Holiday Calendar Cards: These are also great for teaching patterns. One con is that it doesn’t come with progressing years or anything to help with identifying the current day, yesterday, or tomorrow. So when my twins were little and needed those, I made our own. They didn’t look the best, but it totally worked for what we needed!
I used both of these calendars as a reimbursement items with My Tech High. So, if you’re in a program like this, keep that in mind.
Family Calendar
Once my oldest kids could read, understandably, they wanted to know what was going on each day. I used to keep all our appointments in my handwritten planner. But, about this same time, it seems like things started to get busier and my husband and I were also not always on the same page when it came to our schedule. So, I realized we needed a family calendar everyone could see better! A simple wall calendar would totally work for this, but we had a big wall leading our to our garage that I wanted to fill up and make it easy for everyone to see what was going on. We’ve had this one for two years now and it works great. I write in all our appointments and activities and often draw little pictures for my pre-readers. We just print it at our local print shop and use a hanging picture frame to easily swap the months out.
Family Wall Calendar: We use size 36x24
Wooden Hanging Frame: Size 36x24
Why Calendar Time?
In regards to the early years of childhood, I don’t think a daily dedicated “calendar time” is necessary. But, a visual around your home definitely helps give young children a sense of time…including past, present and future. If you think about it, those are pretty abstract concepts for little minds! One of the main reasons I love to have our calendars out is because children will often ask when is this or when is that…especially when they’re anticipating big days like holidays or birthdays, but also simple things like school or church.
For this reason, I really prefer to see the whole calendar at a time versus adding dates one day at a time or moving around words/numbers like you’ll sometimes see in homes or classrooms. Usually simple is better at this age. A calendar chart like this can be really busy and confusing for young children that can’t read and are just learning time awareness. It might work for older kids, but at that point you have to ask your self if they really even still need it?
Some people also like to teach calendar time out of binders or morning menus. If it works and it’s part of your routine, that’s great — don’t change it up. As a personal preference, I like a permanent visual out where everyone can see it at all times. I am always looking at all our calendars! Personally, I love that our wooden one in our schoolroom/office is visually appealing to my older kids but also works really well to help my 5 year old understand the days, months, and years. And my 3 year old will grow into it in the next year or so too.
For teaching days of the week I use the Adam’s Family tune and this one for months of the year.
If you’re looking to get something on Amazon, here are a few other calendar options you may want to check out.
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