The Visual Calendar

My children have been asking a lot recently what day of the week it is, is it a school day, how many school days are left in the week and if tomorrow is a weekend day.   We can tell them what day it is, and they know the days, but their mental map of a week isn’t that concrete yet.    So I decided to make a calendar.

I was going to do something fancy with velcro stars, find a laminator and basically over engineer something that was at it’s basic informational level, simple.    I forgot and realized the next day at breakfast and decided on a low-tech option instead, necessitated by lack of time.

I got a piece of paper and drew a long rectangle and then marked off seven blocks inside the rectangle.   I got a highlighter and colored in the last two blocks at the end of the seven, indicating Saturday and Sunday.     Then I brought the rudimentary calendar over to the children.   I told them this was a week with white days being school days and green days being weekend days.

Then I took my marker and wrote “M” in the Monday block, telling them that was two days ago.   I wrote “T” in the second block for Tuesday and said that was yesterday.   I wrote a “W” in the third block and said that was today, Wednesday.   Then I asked if they could tell me how many more school days we had until the weekend?

They both cried out, “two more days!”   Today I wrote in “Th” for Thursday and pointed out that tomorrow was the last day of the school week before the weekend.   We taped the calendar at the bottom of the refrigerator, just at their eye-level.  

They like the new calendar.   Next week we’ll draw another rectangle below the one for this week and start all over again.

The Big Boy Update:  My daughter told us her favorite number was ten-thousand a while back.   My son didn’t weigh-in on his favorite number until recently where he volunteered for no apparent reason  that zero was his favorite number.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter may be seeing somewhat more information from her left eye.   She’s discovered if she rolls the eye upwards she can tell more from that angle.   On the way to Tae Kwon Do tonight she told me correctly car after car’s colors.   She got the bright colors easily.   Grey, silver and dark grey in the low light were hard to tell, but she nailed the other ones.   She even told me about “a big white truck, mom!”   I told her it was a lot like a truck but it carried people, what did she think it was?   She easily guessed it was a bus.   Then she told me the bus had two other colors on it and said they were red and yellow.   The city bus is white with a long tri-colored stripe of red, orange and yellow below the windows.   I was surprised she could see the colors.    Then we got on a divided highway and she asked about the other cars far away.    She could see the movement of cars across the large, grass median (I think).   Hopefully this is good news for her left eye.   Her right isn’t seeing much with the opacified lens capsule and lack of natural lens, so it has to be left only that this information is coming from.