Check out the second and third parts of this series–Part 2: Learning Board and Part 3: Letter Activities.
In the middle of 2019 all in a short four-month period, our family had gone through some major changes. We’d moved into a new house, my oldest had turned into an emotional three-year-old, and Baby #3 was born. All of this really threw off my groove, and I spent the later half of the year getting my life back in order.
My oldest son (three years old) especially needed more: more structure, more routine, more mental stimulation, and more mom time.
I thought the answer would be a preschool for him, but this was the very middle of the school year and I didn’t want to wait until the fall. So I decided to start what I officially called “Pre-Preschool” here at home. My two sons were three- and two-years-old at the time, and the following system was perfectly aged for them.
(Side note: I planned to homeschool my children starting in elementary school, but I very seriously considered a preschool for my boys mostly for the sake of having somewhere fun to go. Unfortunately, this was all at the beginning of 2020, and that fall when my oldest was ready for an official preschool, everything was shut down for the Covid pandemic, so the decision to homeschool preschool was basically made for me. Turns out I couldn’t have been happier with arrangement, as we LOVED doing preschool together!)
This Pre-Preschool wasn’t full academics. We didn’t do reading lessons or writing practice, seeing as my son was only three. Instead, I simply introduced letters and numbers through play, books, crafts, and food. In the fall when we started a more official preschool curriculum, my son already had some of the basic background knowledge we learned here in Pre-Preschool.
With that being said, this Pre-Preschool was quick, easy, and most importantly fun! I broke it down into three main categories: Calendar Time, the Learning Board, and Letter-of-the-Week activities.
This post is to describe how we did our Calendar Time.
Step One: Gather Supplies
I shopped around for a calendar for quite a while before finally settling on this pocket calendar from Amazon:
I chose this one for two big reasons: First, the fonts are easy to read. I can’t tell you how many supposedly-kid-friendly calendars I found with swirly, fancy, or funky fonts, all of which are very difficult to read. I wanted my boys to be able to understand this calendar, and as my oldest already knew some of his letters, I wanted him to recognize them here.
Second, I chose this calendar for the pockets. A lot of school calendars have velcro backs, but pockets are a lot more versatile. I like the pockets because I can slide the holiday cards behind the number and we can still see and count that number.
The pockets also meant that I could made my own cards to go in the pockets and I could easily add appointments, family events, and other personal items without having to add velcro to everything.
Besides the calendar itself, I added a few other necessary items to my Calendar Time kit:
First, Pointing Sticks. I just so happened to have some unused 12-inch dowels (I think these were originally supposed to be for making cake pops or something). The bottom of the calendar has a big, covered pocket, typically for storing extra calendar pieces, but it was the perfect fit to store our Pointing Sticks. We use these Pointing Sticks for–you guessed it–pointing to the Calendar and Learning Board. The boys love having something special to hold so it makes it a little more interesting than just pointing with our fingers.
Second, the Today Mark, as we call it. I measured this one to be slightly taller than the holiday cards so that it would still be visible even behind them. Then I cut out a rectangle from red cardstock, wrote “Today” across the top with a sharpie, and laminated it.
The Today Mark goes into the current day (no duh!) and is moved every morning at the start of our Calendar Time. This helps cement the concept of how the date changes, having that visual representation, and we are much more easily able to talk about terms like “yesterday” or “tomorrow.” When my son asks when we’re going to Grandma’s house, for example, we can very easily count ahead starting at that Today Mark.
Third, a year mark. I printed out the current year and then I put it in the very top of the calendar next to the month name.
Fourth, extra event pieces and tags.
This calendar set had everything I wanted and more, in fact, quite a bit more. It had a wide variety of religious holidays, some of which I don’t know or celebrate. But still, I put those cards to good use. I flipped them over to the back and wrote whatever personalized event I wanted with a sharpie marker, and as they were already the correct size to fit in the pockets, they were all ready to go. The personalized events I added are as follows:
- “Joy School” (our weekly get-together with my two best friends and their kids)
- “Lunch with Dad at Work” (We used to have a family tradition of visiting my husband at work for lunch on the last Friday of every month, something my boys really looked forward to and they loved marking and seeing on their calendar. Now, due to Covid, he works from home and this card is now useless to us. Thanks a lot, you stupid Corona Virus.)
- “Cunningham Family Night” (our monthly family gatherings with my in-laws)
- “Montgomery Family Night” (our monthly family gatherings with my extended family)
- “Mom and Dad’s Anniversary” (we have a tradition of visiting the temple we were married in, taking a family picture, and enjoying donuts there, which is why my boys know and enjoy that day…for the donuts, of course)
- “General Conference” (a semiannual religious event for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints where our prophet and other leaders speak to the entire church population as a whole)
- “Vacation Start/End” (these are two separate cards; the “Start” card has a forward-pointing arrow and the “End” card has a backward facing one, so my boys can clearly see when we are leaving and coming home from any trips)
- “Doctor” (to signify doctor appointments, obviously)
These are the basics that I made first, although I still have plenty of unused cards to use for future events as well. I also occasionally make temporary tags to slip into the pockets.
For example, we got new sod laid down earlier this spring and my overexcited boys asked me every single day if it had grown enough now to run and play on (I can’t blame them; I was excited about it too). So instead of battling back their daily questions, I cut out a little slip of green construction paper, wrote a big G on it (for “grass,” get it?) and put it in the day two-weeks out from the installation. Then every morning during our calendar time they could clearly see when “Grass Day,” was, as we called it, and how soon it would be here.
Another example: My husband promised the boys a backyard campout before it got too cold and so I made another temporary card for that, also out of basic construction paper. Even more so than with the grass, they were so excited to watch our Today mark move closer and closer to that special campout tag.
Finally, I made the three most important tags of all: Movie Tags.
I never wanted to be a screen family and I really try hard to limit my boys’ screen time (with varying degrees of success). At the very least, I taught them from a very young age that we don’t watch movies except during the baby’s naptime; during the rest of the day we turn off the screens. My boys super know that rule, good and well.
For a while I had established a system of only letting them watch movies every other day. For a while I could say, “We watched a movie yesterday, so no movies today,” and since they understood that was our rule, that was usually acceptable (except when the emotional threenager reared his angry head, of course).
But after Baby #3 was born, most of that went out the window and I let my boys watch movies every single day. It was a necessity for me, at the time, when I was up regularly in the night with my newborn, so I needed the extra rest and downtime during the day. And I don’t regret that.
Once my baby started sleeping through the night, I was ready to go back to our every-other-day movie schedule. And so I created Movie Tags for our calendar. I made three. They are as tall as holiday cards, but much thinner. I used black cardstock and stuck a white letter M sticker on the top of each one (for “movie,” get it?) and then laminated them.
These movie tags move every single week. On Mondays, during our first Calendar Time of the week, I analyze the upcoming week and choose the Movie Days according to our schedule.
Having those Movie Tags changed my life in such a good way. I remember the days when the very first thing I heard every morning was, “Can I watch a movie today? Can I? Can I watch a movie? Can I watch a movie today?” And inevitably, I’d often get some…uh…rather unpleasant push-back when I had to say no. (I honestly thought the internet was just being overly dramatic when I first saw the term “threenager” pop up, but then my son actually turned three and I was suddenly like, “Oh, I get it now. He is as emotional and stubborn as a teenager!”)
But as soon as my calendar and Movie Tags went up, all I had to say was, “Go check if there’s a Movie Tag today.” And off he’d scramble to check the calendar. Sometimes he’d cheer to see that little black tag on the current day, or sometimes he’d dejectedly grumble if it wasn’t there and walk away. But the glorious part of it all is that I didn’t have to be the bad guy. Hooray, hooray, hooray!
Our Typical Calendar Time
I shoot for doing our Calendar Time every weekday, but every now and then we have to rush out the door in the morning and it doesn’t happen. That being said, even on rough weeks we still get it in three or four times out of the five. No, I don’t do Calendar Time on Saturday or Sunday, but I still change the Today Mark so that my boys can look and see what’s going on that day.
- First, we move the Today Mark and say the date. “Today is,” I say, and my boys repeat after me, pointing to each spot as I point to it too, “Monday, September 15th 2020.” I point to each the weekday name, the month name, the numbered date, and then the year, so they can see exactly what I’m saying and where I got that information.
- Second, we count up to the date, pointing to each numbered day as we go. This has worked wonders in not only teaching my boys to count, but in helping them recognize numbers.
- Third, we review the upcoming events. I point out the Movie Tags for that week, our Joy School card (which I also move weekly along with the Movie Tags), and any other events coming up for that month.
- Fourth, we sing the days of the week song. I learned to sing to the tune of “Alouette” like this: “Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, then we start again!” Simple, fast, effective. And, of course, we point along the top of the calendar at the daily names as we sing it.
- Fifth, we sing the months of the year song. This one I sing to the tune of “Ten Little Indians” like this: “January, February, March and April, May, June, July and August, September, October, November, December. These are the months of the year.” We pause and make a big deal of pointing to the current month when we sing it in the song.
And boom. Done with Calendar Time.
I immediately follow Calendar Time with our Learning Board, which I will describe in Part 2 (see the link for that article at the top and bottom of this post).
Benefits of Calendar Time
First, I already described above how easy our Calendar made our movie days. Seriously, it was a life saver.
Second, my boys are aware of all the plans/events/activities coming up and never feel like something is being sprung on them. My oldest struggled with this for a while and didn’t respond well to spontaneous outings. But these were only spontaneous to him, of course, as I’d known long in advance when our extended-family gatherings were happening, and that sort of thing. But now that he knows the entire month’s worth of events and reviews them daily, he knows what to expect and when.
Third, it gives our day that structure and routine that my boys so desperately needed. We usually do our Calendar Time first thing in the morning after we eat breakfast and get dressed, so we start our day together and by setting up expectations of what’s going on that day and what’s coming up later. And then we are ready for the rest of the day!
Fourth, birthdays and holidays have a lot more meaning after marking them on our calendar and watching them get closer and closer every day. Even little holidays like Labor Day we always discuss will be a day that Dad has off of work so we get to be together as a family, and even that simple, daily statement makes it a lot more meaningful.
Fifth, my boys have thrived on the mental stimulation of Calendar Time, both the counting and learning the days of the week, that sort of thing. This goes hand-in-hand with our Learning Board. Like I stated above, my boys have learned to count all the way up to thirty and they recognize numbers so much better having looked at our calendar every day.
Overall, I’m super sold on the daily Calendar Time routine. It’s short, simple, easy, and offers a lot of great benefits.
Whenever we sit down for our Calendar Time, we immediately follow it by reviewing our Learning Board. Check out how I set up and do our daily Learning Board in the following post: How to Pre-Preschool–Part 2: Learning Board. Or see Part 3 of this series, Letter of the Week Activities.
