Morning Message/Calendar Time

Hello! My name is Jeannie from Kindergarten Lifestyle and I am thrilled to be guest blogging for Caitlin today! Awhile back Caitlin asked me about how I do my calendar time. I mentioned to her that my calendar is on the promethean board - completely interactive for the kids. She thought others might be interested in seeing how I conduct it using this wonderful technology.
**Disclaimer - I do have a "real" calendar that we associate with what we see on the promethean board. However, I do not use a hard copy calendar set.**

Each morning we begin with a morning message. Now at the beginning of the school year, I write the morning message on the chart paper and we interact with the message from there. However, by October, I begin using the promethean board as a more interactive, engaging way to do our morning message. I type a message about our days. It could be that we go to the computer lab, it's picture day, or about the big storm that blew through last night. I keep the format pretty simple and standardized. I think this is important in kinder because they need to know what to expect from the morning message. It goes something like this:

                                                                                     March 13, 2012
Good Morning,

Today is Tuesday. We will get to go to the computer lab today. Do you like working on a computer? Why? I love computers!

love,
Mrs. Partin

Of course, I extend the message as the year goes on. I like to include questions and always have the children "turn and talk" about the question. Then we take turns using the magic pen and highlight letters, punctuation, word boundaries, or word wall words. This is a structured time kids love and expect each day. It's not exciting, but is an important routine in our day! And the kids WILL tell you if you mess it up!

Here's a picture of my morning message:

                      (This picture was taken in February - very festive....and this is actually my student teacher - Rebecca)

Next we move on to CALENDAR!

 This is where we read the student expectations before beginning calendar. It's hard to see, but she is actually holding up the expectations here. We recite it with the kiddos - and yes the kids LIKE reciting them!

 This is my "Months of the Year" page. We sing the months song. I record them singing it and play it as we sing along. Each month we move a little star to the new month to keep us on track!

This is the actual calendar. What do we do with this page?

1. Count the days in the current month

2. Extend our pattern for the month

3. Find the day (run our finger up to the day)

4. Sing Days of the Week song

5. Drag the days to today, yesterday, and tomorrow

6. Write the day in long form (written out) and short form (using numbers only)

 This is our weather graph page. I do not keep a running tab on weather for weeks at a time. I feel like the weather graph that they see when watching the weather forecast on the news is a week at a time. This is a more authentic way of seeing the weather.
We sing "What will the weather be?" from Dr. Jean. Then someone gets to come be the "Weather person" and drag the weather to the correct day. Finally, we read the graph -- "On Monday it was....., On Tuesday it was.... On Wednesday it is...." - good way to teach present and past.

 Here you see our "How Many Days Til 1st Grade" page. At the beginning of school we add one each day until we reach the 100th day of school. Starting on day 101, we start counting down until we become 1st graders! They love this and allows us to really start thinking about numbers that come before and after and those bigger numbers. We always talk about why we can't mix up the numbers. For example, this shows "63". We can't write a 3 and 6 because that wouldn't be 63.

This page is our birthday calendar. As each child has a birthday (or in some case - half-birthday), he/she gets to add their name in the color they choose. (This is a big deal for some reason! :0) And of course, we sing "Happy Birthday"!

Well, this is it! I hope you enjoyed seeing my calendar time! It is very routine - a routine the kids learn and love! Thank you for letting me share a special time in my classroom each day! 

If you like what you saw here, please come see me over at 

Kindergarten Lifestyle. I can't wait to see ya!!!

Currently I even have a wonderful Kinder-2nd grade linky party going on!! 

Check it out HERE!