Days of the Week, Months, and Seasons - A Collection of Extension Activities

We love calendar time or circle time as the two terms get interchanged at Mama's Little Homeschool.

We start with the Pledge of Allegiance, we say it twice so that each of the boys can get a turn holding the little American flag. I'm pretty impressed with how quickly this taught them their right hand from their left.

We love to sing songs as part of our calendar routine. There are some awesome songs that are similar or exact versions of the ones we sing, available on YouTube (for free!) - and they help to reinforce calendar/seasonal concepts.

Days of the Week Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loINl3Ln6Ck

We sing the months of the year in order, to the tune of The Macarena: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ6NJWNzBqE

We also sing "How's The Weather?" which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD6FRDd9Hew

Additionally, we recite:

"30 days has September, April, June, and November

All the rest have 31, except for February my dear,

With 28 or 29 in each Leap Year."

I learned that little rhyme in second grade but it's a good way to transition into counting up from one to the current date. To reinforce the date, we also trace the numeric date each day using our clear, dry-erase pockets with one of our freebie transportation number printables stuffed inside. It's been amazing to see how well DG has developed his ability to count beyond 20 (a new skill for him) and write each number better each month! 

To add to our daily routine, we have also used books and projects to extend on these topics.

When learning about the four seasons, we crafted these seasonal trees using recycled paper towel tubes cut in half and circular pieces of construction paper. Crayon and paint were used to depict the tree stage during each season: winter, spring, summer, and fall.

The color of the paper corresponds to white for winter snow, pink for spring blossoms, green for summer leaves, and orange for autumn leaves.

You could paint the tube brown to make it prettier, or use a template of branches, but I like to keep things simple since my kiddos are so young.

We like to keep our trees in the classroom and take them out during calendar time to review all four.

I have to say, seasons were not something that came easily to DG. Perhaps it's because I started off telling him that fall is a time for cool weather and falling leaves and we had bare trees and snow by late October this year, but this craft really helped with his understanding.

We have also enjoyed playing with these calendar-themed magnets from our almost-retro Melissa & Doug wooden calendar that I saved from when I played school as a little girl! Some pieces are missing, and the year magnets stop at 2008 ;) but these particular magnets are great to practice putting in order on the white board. We can then insert the seasons where they occur and add holidays, weather, and events that would correspond. Other times the boys just scatter the magnets all over the house which makes for some fun clean-up as well.

The book "Hap-pea All Year" by Keith Baker was another Scholastic Find of mine (did I tell you guys about the *last* time that I bought books from Barnes & Noble when I walked out with 7 books and spent 1/4 of my husband's paycheck? Scholastic is my go-to for reasonably priced books) and features really fun, big illustrations that open up a lot of conversation about each month's weather, holidays, and activities. It's culturally neutral and we like to re-read it at the beginning of each month. Plus who knew such a questionably tasting veggie could make for such a cute book character, right!?

"Today is Monday" - a classic from one of my favorite authors, Eric Carle - and yes - it was another great deal from Scholastic, I swear I get no endorsements lol, wish I did! ;) But anyway the first time I read this book I was underwhelmed. I thought, "how the heck will this be helpful for preschoolers? Monday string beans - what?" But then, I realized the song! The song! Of course, anything literary put into a song = preschool gold, and well, it is. We have had "Today is Monday" stuck in our head far more than we'd like to admit in this house. The book does feature the sheet music on the last page. It's also available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYTW-r1U2k0 - this is the Starfall version which is slightly different. Your children may be offended by this difference, consider yourself warned.

But looky look - a cute craft from a book! I love love love a craft where we add a little each day. It's so relaxed to do things that way.

Here we have days 1-5 (Monday - Friday) which feature green construction paper string beans, curling ribbon spaghetti, a soup image (could be a soup label or cut from a magazine), construction paper roast beef, and a bingo-stamper-scaled fish with a GOOGLE EYE because that's just how fresh it really is. We kind of are obsessed with google eyes. Don't judge us. Also these use one of my favorite crafting materials: a value paper plate!

How useful these round paper discs have become to me since starting homeschool, I couldn't even begin to explain. ;)