Calendar Hop

I wanted to come up with a more active approach to learning the names of the months for J so I came up with this Calendar Hop Activity.  It ended up being a great mix of gross motor skills, word recognition and matching, reading practice, and counting.

Materials

• Months of the Year Spinner
• A calendar or a print out of each calendar month
• Masking tape or something similar - I used painter's tape.

I printed a calendar off of the computer, so each month was on a separate piece of paper.  I taped the months, in a random order, to the kitchen floor using painter's tape.  I laid the spinner, set to show January, on the floor next to the calendar.  The idea was for J to spin the month spinner, read the name of the month (with assistance from me), find the corresponding month on the floor, and then jump on it.

The invitation to hop through the year.

When the boys came to check it out, J sat down and starting looking at the calendar.

I explained to J that he was welcome to start jumping on the months as they appear on the spinner.  And then I showed him how I could jump from January to February.  Then K imitated me by hopping.

K tries hopping.

Then J started to try out the activity.

Standing on January.

Spinning to the next month.

After hopping on the months for a while, with me reinforcing the names of the months, J took a closer look at each month and started counting the number of days.

He also started rolling along the calendar mat saying, "Look, mom!  I'm rolling!"

This activity turned out well since he was able to practice his months (and I found out that he is starting to recognize some of the names already!) while blowing off some of the energy he had.