Wooden Calendar with days of the week and season peg figures.

Having a daily ritual known as ‘Calendar Time’ is a popular morning activity in many preschool classrooms. Bringing this routine into your home daycare is a fast and easy way to teach the Days of the Week (and more) to your preschool children.

Calendar time has TWO main benefits for children.

1. New Concepts
Calendar Time is an enjoyable way to introduce new concepts to young children. The benefit to the caregiver is that it is quick and almost effortless to implement.

Children delight in singing the same songs every day until they become familiar. Once they become familiar songs, children love singing them BECAUSE they are familiar.

Calendar Time is effortless for an adult, you will have the routine memorized in no time. Once all the children know the routine by heart, then you can add new concepts to the routine.

2. Visual Map of the Day
We all like to know what is on the schedule for the day ahead. It helps us mentally prepare for the day’s events.

Children thrive on a predictable daily routine. They are able to handle changes in the routine beautifully when they have been properly prepared.

Calendar time gives children a visual map of the day, week and month. They can see the field trip to the apple orchard coming up at the end of the month.

Want to know how to avoid a meltdown the morning of the apple orchard field trip? Talk about it at Calendar Time for a month. After three weeks, all the children will be ready and eager to go on the big morning.

Weather peg dolls: These weather peg dolls has been one of our best selling item! Consists of 6 peg dolls including Sunny, Snow, Rainbow, Cloudy, Rain & Windy, hand-painted with love using non-toxic water-based paints and varnish, our weather peg dolls are great for your little ones to learning about weather and seasons!

Learning weather provides many excellent learning opportunities. We can learn with them about our climate and the world around us and so much more. For example, as they learn about the weather, kids also learn about measurement, observation, recording data, interpreting data, and more.

It can really help to get them involved in weather monitoring and understand the important role the weather plays in our everyday lives.
Learning about weather helps in language, numeracy, motor skills, discovery of the world, arts & creative expression, social & emotional development.

Days of the week peg dolls: Simplistic set of days of the week peg dolls. Painted according to Waldorf rainbow days of the week. Each peg doll is hand painted with names written manually to give that natural feel.

The days of the week are an important measure of time for children to understand. Once they start going to school, learning their names becomes an important task. Knowing this helps them keep their schedules organized and to be aware of when certain events are going to happen, like a field trip in school or an important exam.

It’s essential to teach the little ones how the days of the week are divided. There are some days where most people go to work or to school or workdays, and then other free days where people are more likely to rest, do outside activities like going to the park or to the cinema which is common during weekends. This information helps the little ones start understanding the time and the importance of keeping an organized schedule, one that will allow them not only to study but also to play and share a good time with friends!

In order to teach your little ones the days of the week, it’s really helpful to keep up with a daily routine. By establishing daily habits and routines, like brushing the teeth every night, tidying up their rooms every day, or going to the park during the weekend, children feel more in control of their lives. This sense of control makes the little ones more relaxed and cooperative in the house and also in school since they know what to expect from the daily activities and start planning ahead how to manage them.

Calendar peg dolls: An annual calendar ring that allows the child to participate in the daily passage of time. It contains 12 peg figures in 12 colors according to the Waldorf pedagogy, both to determine the month and its season of the year. 1 bowl of natural wood, two natural wood cubes with the numbers of the days and a platform distributed in 4 sections that determine the seasons, with the months of the year.

This toy set includes 12 peg figures in 12 colours, 1 bowl, 2 wooden cubes and a circular 4 piece month platform.

Calendars help young children learn the basics of the days of the week and the months of the year. Your calendar offers opportunities for other learning as well, including vocabulary, sequencing, and math. Take some time to use your calendar in a few new ways. Below are some ideas to get you started:

Create birthday reminders!
Encourage your child to mark special birthdays on the calendar. This can include siblings, grandparents, and even teachers! When a special birthday is coming up, seeing the reminder can prompt your child to create a special birthday card for that person.

Identify interesting words for the month.
Use the activities going on at your house during that month to put together a short list of interesting words. For example, during August your word list could include vocabulary words related to the weather (humid, hazy, tropical) or words related to the upcoming school year (anticipation, transition, supplies). Make a game of incorporating your month’s calendar words into conversation.

Develop family timelines.
Flipping back and forth through the months can help your child develop a timeline or sequence of events, and can deepen your child’s understanding of concepts such as before and after, yesterday and tomorrow. Some families create a visual timeline to mark significant events such as a new baby or the start of school. These timelines help a child understand why something isn’t happening right away.

Strengthen an understanding of numbers (called “numeracy”).
Talk about the 1st day of the month, the 2nd day, the 3rd and so on. Encourage exploration using these terms. “The 1st day of this month is a Wednesday. What day is the 1st day of the month next month? How many days does this month have? Does next month have the same number of days, or does it have more?”

As you can see, calendars are useful tools to have around the house! These seemingly simple tasks reinforce more complex concepts and vocabulary in a fun and engaging way.