Calendar Math Activities

Throughout my year I continue to add new challenges to the morning routine.  For the calendar, I start the year with pre-numbered calendar days with different symbols that we use to create a  pattern.  The pattern I begin with is a simple AB pattern, I then extend it to a AABB pattern and continue to alter the pattern each month.  After the children have become comfortable with the calendar and with number recognition I ask them to write the numbers on colored paper and ask them to choose and create the color pattern for the month.  

September-March                                                      March-June

To introduce tally marks, the children have been quite excited about counting Boys and Girls each day.  I have a small dry erase board that I have tacked up on the bulletin board.  On the dry erase board  I have Boys written on one side and Girls on the other with a permanent marker.  With a dry erase marker I use tally marks to count the boys and girls in the class and mark them on the corresponding side.  We then count the tally marks by 5's with the children and write the numerals one on top of the other to add them up.
In the month of March and on into June I have been asking individual children to come up and use the tally marks to count boys and girls.  Some of the children have been able to add up how many children in total as well.

To familiarize the children with graphing we graph the weather and lost teeth each day.  This is a regular part of our morning routine.  I have laminated weather symbols that the children put up on the appropriate weather for that day.  We analyze the graph and determine which weather has the most, least, more, less, even or equal.  I take down the symbols at the end of each month and start over again. 
An extension to this activity that you can start at the beginning of the year would be to count the weather symbols each month and chart them on a line graph.  The students would be able to see which weather was most common throughout the year.  I'm sure in Alberta we have more snowy days than sunny.
For our tooth graph we chart it by the month.  Whenever a child loses a tooth they write their name down on a precut tooth and put it up on the corresponding month, the children are excited as the graph grows each month.  We then determine which month we have lost the most teeth and least teeth.