Out with the old and in with the new. Well, almost. After tomorrow, we can hang up new calendars. Today, kids can have some old calendar math fun.
Do you have some old calendars or even an extra new one that your child can use? There are lots of different ways kids can have fun with a calendar.
1. Kids can cut out numbers and pictures from the months and glue them onto a big sheet of paper. Some kids might want to glue numbers 1 to 10 in order. Others will just cut out a few and glue them randomly.
2. Help a child find the number of his or her birthday. Kids can then look for that same number in the other months, cut out that number each time and make a whole page of just that number.
3. Kids may want to color over certain numbers instead of cutting and pasting. All the number 1’s could be red, the number 2’s purple, the number 3’s green and so on.
4. Colors could make a pattern on the squares too. Some kids may only make a pattern using 2 colors. Kids that love making patterns may use a different one for each month.
5. For a much more complicated challenge, older kids might like to cut all the numbers out and recreate them to make a whole chart from 1 to 100. This could be tricky!
Whatever kids do, it’s important that the activity be fun and playful. In order for kids to feel confident and positive about numbers, they need lots of hands-on and play opportunities. Did you know that math phobia can occur very early and affect 1 in 4 children? To counteract this, our kids need to see and hear about numbers and math in ordinary, everyday experiences. Giving kids a calendar to explore not only gives them a chance to see numbers but to create with them too. They can come up with their own ideas about what to do with a calendar.
You can show your child a new calendar. Check out how many days there will be in a year. Look at the pictures for the months. After a whole year, it will be old and they can play with it then too for some more calendar math fun. When it’s time, where will you hang the new calendar?
