How to teach the calendar and dates

Grade 1 to Grade 3

Calendar work is reading a month grid and using it: naming the days of the week and months of the year in order, finding a date, working out the day a date falls on, and counting the days between two dates. It puts number order and pattern to practical use.

How to teach it

1. Learn the seven days and twelve months in order first, since everything else depends on the sequence.
2. Read the month grid: each column is a weekday and each row a week, so the same weekday sits in one column.
3. Find the day for a date, and the date for a clue like 'the second Tuesday', by reading down the column.
4. Count days between two dates by counting on through the grid, watching the jump from the end of one week to the next.
5. Learn how many days each month has (the knuckle trick, or 'thirty days has September'), and that February has 28 or 29.

Worked example

Days from Mon 3rd to Mon 17th:

   3rd -> 10th is 7 days (one week)
   10th -> 17th is 7 days
   total: 7 + 7 = 14 days

Common mistakes

• Getting the order of the months or the days wrong.
• Counting both the start and end date, or neither, so the total is out by one.
• Forgetting that months have different lengths, and that February varies.
• Losing count when a span crosses from one week or month into the next.