Reggio-Emilia Inspired Calendar | Calendar Time
I am not going to pretend like I know anything about the Reggio-Emilia approach to learning. From what I understand it is used in a lot of Montessori learning environments and pertains to observation or documentation. Documentation is writing down what you see and hear your student say to record growth, learning, and curiosities.
Basically, I was getting bored with our magnetic calendar on our fridge and the dates magnets only went up to 2022. I’d have to tape pieces of paper over the old years or start something new. I searched the internet for calendar ideas and to be honest, it was quite challenging. They’re all relatively the same.
Somehow, in the depths of the internet, I came across a teacher’s blog and she shared her calendar time with student drawn pictures. Obsessed! Emme love love loves to draw so this was perfect and different. It’s student made, handmade, memory filled and I absolutely love it. 😍
Here is how we do our Reggio-Emilia inspired calendar.
I had E write out the months and days in pencil. Then I went over her handwriting with a black sharpie. The girls colored in the months/days afterwards. I had to measure the width of the board and then divide by seven to figure out how to get it all to fit on the board.
We do calendar in the afternoon now—after most things are all said and done. Emme will write the day and then draw a “quick” picture to show something she did that day. I will write on the inside what her picture was about. This has helped her understand past and future events as well as days of the week etc. Sometimes she’d ask, “Did I go to the trampoline park today?” when it was actually two days ago 🤪 . This has helped with that.
She’ll tell me today’s date, “Today is Friday, January 13, 2023”. Then she’ll tell me what day was yesterday and what day is tomorrow. We used to sing the days-of-the-week song too. The one that goes along with the Adam’s Family tune…
Days of the week (clap, clap), days of the week (clap, clap), days of the week, days of the week, days of the week. There’s Sunday and there’s Monday, there’s Tuesday and there’s Wednesday, there’s Thursday and there’s Friday, then there’s Saturday. Days of the week (clap, clap), days of the week (clap, clap), days of the week, days of the week, days of the week.”
We did graph the weather as well but I’ve since stopped doing it. Mostly because we have done it for so long now, it’s becoming boring. I think she gets it. She likes to sing the weather song though. It goes something like this…
What’s the weather? What’s the weather? What’s the weather like today? It is sunny, really sunny. It is sunny today.
I like to fill up with empty space on the board with pictures of things we did during that month. When the month is over, I take everything down and put it into her Kindergarten memory book. It will be fun to read these calendars years from now and reminisce on what we did!
She loves to draw so this version of calendar was perfect for her!
xo L.
