TEACHING CALENDAR SKILLS

Hi it's an endless joy for me to meet you guys again with this great topic... Thanx to all my students who  helped/helping me in my journey of learning new skills and concepts while working with them. Every child is a great resource and is equivalent to a good book. Hats off  you guys!!!! and i adore you all

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 Have you ever wondered how to teach your child calendar skills? Calendar skills are necessary for daily living and learning to use calendar helps us to organize our day more effectively. The concept of calendar is very abstract, and it is difficult for many our children to understand. Prerequisites for teaching calendar skills are, recognize numbers, identifies sight words of the days and months of the year. Once the child masters prerequisites It’s a good sign and you are good to go ahead to teach the concept of calendar to our extraordinary brains. Autistic children struggle to understand and use the concept of today, tomorrow, yesterday in their communication effectively since this seems abstract link it to what your child does day in and day out.  So it’s very important goal to work and help them to lead for functional independency.  

Strategies to teach the concept of calendar:

      Help them to make their own calendar, teaching this concept is all about looking at the calendar each day and helping him/her to understand what day it is in the month.

      Introduce songs and rhymes to learn days and months names in order/ in sequence.

      Introduce sight words of days and month names, train him to identify and arrange them in sequence

      Teaching the concept of days by associating to activities, give him a concrete cue for understanding the abstract concept of Monday. For ex; Monday he goes for swimming, Tuesday he goes for music class, Wednesday his favorite program telecasts in TV…. So on. Otherwise you set a specific activity for each day to understand the concept, see to that you follow the activities consistently

      Play matching games; give practice by matching the day’s flash cards to the activities. Make it fun

      Teaching the months of the year by helping your child to associate them with holidays, festivals and birth days, introduce matching and bingo games for better registration

      Choose colors to represent the month /stickers cut from a magazine or news papers

      Get a calendar with one sheet per day. Make it a practice to tear it every day morning or use a monthly calendar and make sure he crosses off the day as it passes

      Once the child has had plenty of practice understanding day concept, introduce the concept of week. Explain to your child that a week has 7 days.

      Make day and night representation cards (for day its ‘sun’ and for night it’s moon). The visual representation helps your child to understand if they have trouble with the concept

      Customize the calendar for your child with 30 squares representing days and hang on an envelope next to the calendar to hold the days of the month and numbers. Attach Velcro to the calendar numbers so the numbers can be put on and removed

      Introduce the calendar/ talk about special activity for the day saying today is…… and help him to find the numbers to represent the date

      Teach calendar skills through music and songs, it’s a fun way to remember the sequence and repetition helps your child to memorize. Go to www.educationworld.com/a-lessons/archieves/calendar.shtm/, which has some fun songs

      Talking about the date each day and looking at the calendar and helping them to understand where they are in each month and how the month fit together and form a year can be a really good way to start talking about calendar

      Mark special days by crossing or coloring the square, talk about how many days until that happens, this will help him to use a calendar and see how it works

      Prepare a folder for understanding before after and the concept of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Today is……. Tomorrow will be…….. Ask him questions like which day comes after Thursday etc

      Along with the concept of calendar teach the child to talk about the weather of the day by giving picture weather cards like today is sunny day…..

      Write a social story about days of the week. Ex; I go to my grandma’s house on Mondays I eat berries there I go swimming on Tuesdays wearing my blue swim suit….

      Use calendar as part of daily activity. Repetition is a key for the success

Your child experience is the first hand, the best way to understand calendar is talk about it every single day so that it becomes part of their life.  Experiment with different methods and use material which you feel relevant to make the child explore the conceptJJJJ I mean sky is the limit. Brainstorm with your family to generate ideas, I am sure your ideas might work best.

Take care