Classroom calendars are one of the most effective teaching tools and have been used in classrooms everywhere in order to focus our children at the start of the day or provide exciting learning opportunities. It should be the main focal point of any classroom and inspiring enough to provoke questions and curiosity from your students. Below you will find 20 creative ways to bring your classroom to life with the help of calendar-based activities.
1. Pick A location
Your calendar should be on display somewhere prominent in your classroom. What do you want to include on your calendar wall? Consider including things like a calendar, the number of days in school, the date is written out in both numbers and words, weather cards, a question of the day, or similar.
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2. Calendar Worksheets
A calendar worksheet, although basic, can be the best way to teach children how to use a calendar. These free worksheets are designed to be used for the entire month. Every day the students answer one or two of the easy-to-read and creatively designed questions.
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3. Today’s Calendar Page
Simple, yet effective. This easy-to-use worksheet will help you to practice the day and time with your students. Everything they need to know on one sheet! This could also provoke questions about the day or key events that may be happening within the school community.
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4. Count The Days On Your Hands
We know it’s tricky to remember how many days are in each month so you can show your children this fun and easy-to-remember trick to help them learn the rule! They’ll be calendar masters by the end of this “knuckle days” activity!
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5. Classroom Schedule
The most important part of any classroom calendar. Create a roster so that the students are responsible for changing the daily schedule. This helps them understand how the routine of the day work, whilst also giving you a little less to do during the morning rush! These brightly colored printables will keep your students on task.
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6. Calendar-based Lesson
All you need is some simple resources (word cards, enlarged monthly calendar, statements, numbers, etc). This will give your students the opportunity to understand the calendar using real-life scenarios and build up their questioning skills.
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7. Calendar Math Lessons
For upper elementary students, reading the calendar may be simple enough, but adding in a bit of data and a few ‘tricky’ questions will develop problem-solving skills whilst learning math in a hands-on way.
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8. Weather Tracker Activity
Calendars are a great way for students to observe patterns and see how numbers form part of our daily routines. Encourage your students to show an interest in the weather using a weather tracker on a calendar.
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9. Christmas Calendar Fun
The Advent calendar is a fantastic resource to add a little festive cheer to your classroom, but can also be used as an effective teaching point. We all know Christmas in school is full of events, festivities, and a few off-timetable activities. Use these ideas to incorporate a handy advent calendar into your classroom environment, or a collection of activities to look forward to each day.
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10. Guessing Game
Guessing games are great for engaging students. The element of the unknown and the competitive nature of this game will have them joining in, in no time! Teachers could think of an unnamed month and give students clues to identify which one this could be. For example: “I am in Winter. Santa visits children. It is cold”.
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11. Create A Planner
This activity is great for older elementary students that will need guidance to be organized for senior school. Have learners create their very own calendars!
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12. Bingo
Hand out pages with different months of the calendar so that the dates fall on different days. Randomly choose days and dates and call them out, for example, “Monday the 10th”. Anyone who has the 10th on a Monday will mark it off.
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13. Interactive Calendar
This is a great computer-based resource. It will enable your students to practice navigating a calendar by stamping the correct place using the information given.
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14. Spin Wheel Calendar
Create your very own spin wheel calendar! This is a fun art-based activity to create the days, months, and seasons on a homemade calendar wheel. Great for extra practice of ordering the year too!
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15. Calendar Notebooks
Aimed at younger students, create calendar notebooks using these free printables to learn about days of the week, telling time, place value, weather, graphing, and so much more!
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16. Number Of The Day
Introduce younger children to the number of the day idea. Using the number of the date eg.14th, what can they tell you about the number 14? Can they create a number sentence using that number?
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17. Days Of The Week Wheel
Students spin the wheel and read the days of the week. Create questions to find out which days of the week come before or after. Students can also create their own questions to share with a friend.
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18. Use Videos
In this video, students learn about how many days each month has, years with leap years, weekdays, and weekends! There is also a handy lesson plan attached to the video for further learning.
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19. Create A Kindness Calendar
Students can learn about the days of the week whilst taking part in random acts of kindness. Students can create their own kindness ideas and compile them onto a class calendar.
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20. Calendar Songs
There is a wide array of fun calendar songs to share with your students to broaden their calendar vocabulary. These fun videos will have them singing through the seasons, dancing through the months, and playing through the days of the week!
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