When I was teaching preschool, I learned about Kim Adsit and Shari Sloane's Student Calendar Notebook. I thought it was such a great way to get students more involved in the morning meeting. I couldn't use it in preschool, but was excited to get started once I was in 1st grade. Now you might remember that my 1st year in first grade was a little rough to start out. I got transferred from preschool to first grade on the first day of our 3-day teacher institute after which school started. So 3 days to get a 1st grade classroom ready did not include student calendar notebooks! A few months in, I decided to try it. I have been in love ever since!
The first year I did use some of Kim and Shari's ideas. However, they are all made in landscape which wasn't working with my binders on my kiddos' laps on the carpet. So I remade the binder pages. Since then I added Wild About Teaching's Numbers Galore Pages, monthly poetry, and this year morning work.
The first two years I used the binders, they were just used at the carpet. But this year I decided to add morning work to the back. So right away when the kids come into the classroom, they get their binders out and start working. This year I added some of Reagan Tunstall's Rise and Shine Binder.
The kids feel very proud to have their own binder to use. It was a pretty big investment and some are not treating them as well as I would like but it is what it is. I wanted to use them so I have to deal with the pitfalls.
I have a binder too that I fill out as the kids do to model.
Cover:
Calendar: I don't usually fill in the numbers but I did on August. I fill in the 1st on each month so the kids get off to a good start on where to write the numbers. This page is on cardstock so it will last all month.
On the back of the calendar page: We make a tally mark and fill in a fingernail for each day of the month.
Weather: This page has one month on one side and the next month on the other side. It is also on cardstock.
I made up some number patterns. The helper picks a number pattern and tells me the missing numbers. I change these throughout the year to go with what we are working on in math. This page is on cardstock.
On the back are clocks. The helper sets the judy clock to a time on the hour and the students copy it into their binder page. I have a big one I write on to model.
We count the days of school and fill in the numbers on a 100s chart. At first they trace them and eventually write them themselves. 101+ is on the back.
Next are the Numbers Galore pages. We do the page that shows how many days of school we've had. Mine is in a page protector but their pages are just paper. Days 1-20, we just do the Numbers Galore page. Day 21 and after, I put DOL (It is really called Daily Language Review) on the back.
After this are poetry pages for the month. I wrote another post on my poetry. We do some echo reading and practice and eventually they read them aloud to the class.
Finally in the back of the binder is morning work. I have a morning work packet that I bought and use as well as practicing spelling words and sentences.
I do feel overwhelmed at the beginning of each month when I have to change the calendar and weather pages, add and remove number/DOL pages, poetry, and morning work. It is worth it to see the kids' reactions when they open up to find new pages. I did make the copies for the calendar, weather, number/DOL, and poetry in advance. So I just have to copy the morning work at the beginning of the month. I binder clipped the pages together thinking that the kids could change out the pages themselves, but it is just too hard for them and they end up making a mess with the pages which takes me longer to clean up than just doing it myself in the first place does.
