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Daycare Center and Family Home Forum>Side Topic to Coin Recognition Thread - Time and Calendar
spud912 11:40 PM 07-28-2012
The coin thread got me thinking about 2 other concepts I want to emphasize more with my preschoolers: time and calendar. Does anyone have any good ideas to teach a child how to read the time? What about calendar concepts (days of the week, months, seasons)? Thanks!
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Countrygal 05:31 AM 07-29-2012
The first thing I did for learning the calendar was to get a big, wipe-off one and post on it every day, filling in holidays. I want to eventually include weather as well, but I'm not that organized yet.

The next thing we did was learn a days of the week song. The kids love singing it! It really stuck!

Other than that, I think it's mainly just repetition, but I'm eager to hear what everyone else has done!

I haven't done time with the littles yet, only with my kindergartener. I got worksheets and a clock with movable hands, made matching cards with the printed time, clock face and digital time. We're working on time and money together now. He's going into first grade.
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EntropyControlSpecialist 07:35 AM 07-29-2012
Look at your state standards for Kindergarten. Telling time is typically not something that is required to be mastered by a Kindergarten age student.

When I taught 1st grade, they were beginning to learn about coins. I do a coin chant with my Preschoolers now for the sake of introducing them and letting them inspect them. They are not expected to recognize which coin is which nor are they expected to know the value of each coin. Some of them do! They are ahead of the game by 2-3 years! But, some of them don't and that is perfectly fine.

Calendar is for introduction purposes as well in Preschool. We do it daily here, and are almost at the end of July but they still don't quite realize that is still is July. Some do, most don't. But, it's introducing Calendar Time to them and introducing the months/days/holidays. My calendar has a month that changes above it and each weekday is in black while the weekend dates are in red. I purposely did this.
We do a days of the week song in english and spanish and they really enjoy that.
The months of the year songs we play several times daily while the children are playing. They can say them in english and spanish.
We discuss seasons by reading books about them during the season.

Weather is one thing that they do understand fully. We discuss how we wear shorts and t-shirts when it is hot outside, how our hair blows when it is windy, how we get wet if it is raining, etc.
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spud912 08:52 AM 07-29-2012
Originally Posted by EntropyControlSpecialist:
Look at your state standards for Kindergarten. Telling time is typically not something that is required to be mastered by a Kindergarten age student.

When I taught 1st grade, they were beginning to learn about coins. I do a coin chant with my Preschoolers now for the sake of introducing them and letting them inspect them. They are not expected to recognize which coin is which nor are they expected to know the value of each coin. Some of them do! They are ahead of the game by 2-3 years! But, some of them don't and that is perfectly fine.

Calendar is for introduction purposes as well in Preschool. We do it daily here, and are almost at the end of July but they still don't quite realize that is still is July. Some do, most don't. But, it's introducing Calendar Time to them and introducing the months/days/holidays. My calendar has a month that changes above it and each weekday is in black while the weekend dates are in red. I purposely did this.
We do a days of the week song in english and spanish and they really enjoy that.
The months of the year songs we play several times daily while the children are playing. They can say them in english and spanish.
We discuss seasons by reading books about them during the season.

Weather is one thing that they do understand fully. We discuss how we wear shorts and t-shirts when it is hot outside, how our hair blows when it is windy, how we get wet if it is raining, etc.
Thanks for all the tips! Yeah, besides being the age of 5 before September 1st, our kindergartens mainly want the kids to have met basic social skills. Our schools were ranked 49 out of the 50 states though. I just wanted to introduce the concepts to them. Some of the children I have are definitely ready and able to learn some of it.
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