Afternoon Calendar Math Activities

Yesterday, I told you about our Morning Language Arts Activities. Today I want to show you what we do during Calendar Math activities.

I missed a couple of pictures, but first we discuss today's date. We write the date, discuss the month and day of the week, and sing a couple of songs to help us remember the months and days of the week. Then we figure out how many days we've been in school. We used to count them every day, but at this point in the year, it gets a little monotonous to count to 100 every single day, so we like to change it up and count by fives, or tens, or just start from a student-chosen number ("let's start at 57 today"). By the way, your child should be able to count all the way to 100 by the end of the year without help, and without skipping any numbers!

Then we talk about today's weather, and graph it. We discuss the graph, too, with such questions as "How many more sunny days are there than rainy days?"

We represent today's date (number) with ten frames and a seasonal picture. For example, on the 18th of January, we show eighteen penguins. Sorry I missed the picture for this one! Then we show that same number in place-value format using "cubes".

We also show today's date with tally marks.

Next we roll the dice and practice making number sentences and "counting on". By now, your child should be able to figure out which dice has the bigger number, start from that number, and count the rest to find the total. For example, if they roll a 4 and a 2, they would say, "4, 5, 6" instead of starting all the way back at 1!

And of course, reading is snuck in anywhere possible! Here the leader calls on another student to "stump" them with a popcorn word to spell!

Finally, we always graph any birthdays and any teeth lost that day, but we haven't had any of either for quite a while!

Hopefully this gives you a glimpse of what we do on a daily basis!