Daily Classroom Calendar Date Teaching Materials for Kids

When I first started teaching special education, more than half of my students were in my classroom the majority of the day. I did daily calendar/group time each morning with those students. After group time, the students would go over the date and day of the week again individually or with me or one of my aides. As the push for inclusion increased during the 4 years that I taught special education, more more of my students spent more time in the general education setting each year. Even when I didn't have a daily calendar/group time anymore, I still had all of my students go over the date and day of the week with me at some point during the day. I developed a variety of calendar materials for my students to complete this task.

I developed these materials for students in kindergarten through fourth grade, but they may be appropriate for older students as well. I developed them for special education students, but they are appropriate for general education students as well.

I designed the calendar in Boardmaker and printed it on half of a manila folder. (If you cut a manila folder in half, you can run it through a printer.) I also designed the month, date, and day of the week symbols in Boardmaker and printed them on additional half manila folders. I laminated all of the materials before I applied the Velcro dots. (I get all of my Velcro dots in bulk from fastenation.com).

I had coordinating Boardmaker symbols for the days of the week in the bottom slots of my wall calendar so the students had consistent visuals.

I used another manila folder to store the extra Velcro calendar symbols. I did not laminate this folder before applying the dots, but in the future, I would laminate first. This storage system makes it very easy to change the calendar symbols as needed because it's very easy to find the symbols you want. This is the most time consuming calendar material to make, but it will last a long time. This calendar is perfect for students with autism who prefer Velcro. It is also perfect for students who have limited fine motor control and can manipulate the Velcro more easily than a pencil.

This calendar has the same layout as the Velcro calendar above, but it's on paper. I also created this calendar with Boardmaker. When I taught, typically at some point during the week, I would create all of the paper calendars for the next week. This calendar is perfect for students who are just learning to write or who have difficulty writing.

I designed this version for students in 1st-2nd grade who are ready to start writing the words, need the large dotted line writing format, and need assistance spelling the months and days of the week. Some students are ready to move on from this version by the end of 1st grade while others still need the dotted lines and/or spelling for the months and day of the week into 3rd or 4th grade. Again, typically at some point during the week, I would create all of these paper calendars for the next week.

This version is perfect for students who don't need the spelling anymore, still need a model for the date formats, and still need the horizontal page format to fit everything because they have large handwriting. Because this version is not customized for each day, you can simply run off the page as is. If the wrong month/month number at the top confuses students, you can update it for each new month.

This version is perfect for students who are able to write the date and day of the week independently and simply need to keep practicing it. Again, because this version is not customized for each day, you can simply run off the page as is.

Some of my students still had trouble identifying yesterday, tomorrow, last month, and next month. This work only takes 2-3 minutes at most, making it a very easy method for reviewing these concepts every day. I made two versions: one for Monday-Wednesday and one for Thursday-Friday and ran them off for a month at a time. I did not made any versions of this work without visuals. If I were to ever do, I would still make them multiple choice instead of written answer so that they can still be completed quickly.