I have had several questions about how I do calendar activities on the Promethean Board. I've taken screen shots of each page to give you an idea of what it looks like. I've uploaded it to Promethean Planet for you to use if it looks like something that would work well with your class. (Let me know if you download it from Promethean Planet. The images on their website don't look complete. I'm hoping that it downloads correctly. I don't have the Promethan software at home to be able to check it out). Click
here to download the file.
Page 1: This is the true "calendar" part of calendar time. The kids can drag the yellow box to mark the day. They also drag the days of the week to the proper boxes. I have created this calendar to last until December. You can easily retype the name of the month as it changes. I created pictures for each month. They are just stacked on top of each other. So when September comes around, just click on the August calendar picture, right click, and choose "delete". September will be underneath. You'll need to retype the name of the month yourself.
Page 2: Pledge of Allegiance. After the pledge, we sing a patriotic song. For the first four months of school, we sing one song a month (so the kids can learn each one). After that, they help me choose which song to sing in the morning.
Pages 3-6: When you click on the song link from page 2 it will take you to each song. I embedded the songs into the flip chart, so all you have to do is click on the music icon to hear the song. Click on the "more calendar" star to return to the rest of the flip chart (and skip over the rest of the song pages)
Page 7: Place Value Review. This is the page to record the days in school and drag up the base-10 blocks. After the 20th day, you can practice having the kids hear the numbers better. If it's the 23rd day I will say "we have been in school 23 days. Listen to the number carefully, what two numbers do you hear in 23?" You would be surprised how difficult this is for first graders at the beginning of the year. Anyway-- the answer is 20 and 3! There's also a place to record how many H, T, and O. So for the number 23 they would write 0 hundreds, 2 tens and 3 ones.
Page 8- Money Practice. Here the children will practice making the days in school or the date with coins. If it's the 23rd day in school, they would make 23 cents. The other option (which is a little easier) is to make the date. So, if today is August 7th, the kids would find ways to make 7 cents. This way is easier because you will never be making more than 31 cents. We practice the coin poems for several months until the kids know them very well.
Page 9- Ways to Make ___- I will pick a number (ex. 8) and the kids will come up with ways to make that number, using addition and subtraction facts. This is a great time to practice using the 100s chart, and number line. We also talk a lot about addition and subtraction properties. The "Macarena Math" song from Dr. Jean is included on this page to practice counting by 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s.
Page 10- We practice writing the "short date", telling time, odd/even, and greater than/less than on this page. With the clock I progress from drawing the hands to the hour, then half hour, then 5 minute marks, then writing the time and having the children draw the hands. Odd or even starts out simple with just writing a one digit number and the kids writing the words "odd" or "even". Later I will make it two digits, then three digits. Greater Than/Less Than also starts out simple with one digit numbers, then two digits, but later in the year I will write addition facts on each side, or draw coins on each side. Anything to keep them thinking. It's also good to throw in some equations where the answer is equal. This one is always a little more tricky at first.
I stated at the beginning of the post that this is the calendar for the first semester. Later in the year I change it up a little bit and take out some of the routines that get boring. I'll post the second semester later in the school year.
