School Time: Calendar

As I have started Homeschooling I've felt the need to start writing little blogs about what we do for school.  Hopefully this may help others who are thinking of homeschooling themselves, or at the very least, give a glimpse into what we are doing.

Each morning when school begins the first thing I do is "Gorgeous' Reading Time".  At this time I get to pick out 3 picture books and call it Gorgeous special reading time.  Gorgeous gets dibs on my lap.  Handsome always sits next to me and listens as well, but I make sure Gorgeous knows that this is HER special time with me.  This makes it easier to work one on one with Handsome as I can remind her that she already got her one on one special time.

Then we do the pledge of Allegiance and then on to the Calendar.

Calendar Time:

1) Handsome and/or Gorgeous (she has a choice to join us or not) count the number of the days, find the correct next number and place it on the calendar.

2) Gorgeous sings with me to figure out what day of the week it is.  (Handsome already can read the day and knows all the days of the week.)

3) We say the date all together.  It goes something like this; "Today is Wednesday, September 14th 2011."

4) Then Handsome has to figure out what day was Yesterday and what day is Tomorrow.

5) If there is a special holiday or birthday, Handsome has to do a count down and let me know how many more days there are.

Handsome has been doing "Calendar Time" for the last year, so he has it down.  So recently I have been adding additional questions such as: "How many days are in a week?"  "What day comes after Tuesday?"  "What day comes before Sunday?" etc.

 When have these cool count down blocks we use for birthdays.  I want to make more for Holidays.. but wonder if by the time I get to it, we may not need them. :)

Handsome has to write the month each time we change months.  As we move on, I have put the old month on the side of the calendar.  So randomly we sing the month song and I then ask him questions such as; "How many months in a year?"  "What month comes before September?"  "What month comes after April?" etc.  (and you'll see Gorgeous' months up there too above her head.)

It seems like a lot, but really it is all done in a matter of minutes.