Learning about the Baha’i calendar

The boys and I start most of our days with circle time (the reason I say “most” is because some days we have activities in the morning outside of the home, like Damian’s Music Together class, so those days we only have prayers together). Our circle time has always included calendar time, during which we learn about the days of the week and the months of the Gregorian calendar.

I have taught my boys about the Baha’i calendar before, but I wanted to make it a more regular part of this calendar learning time. I made this Baha’i calendar to add to the circle time area of our school room to illustrate the 19 months of the year (each made up of 19 days).

I decorated a clothes pin which we will use to mark the months as we go through the year. On the first day of each month the boys will take turns moving the clothes pin to mark the new month. We will learn about the name and meaning of the name of that new month (the months of the Baha’i calendar are all named after the attributes of God, such as Splendor, Glory, Grandeur, Knowledge, Love, Mercy). On a regular basis (maybe daily, because the boys love the singing part of our circle time) we will sing the Baha’i calendar song “Song of the Months” by Doug Cameron so we memorize the names and order of the months. I have other calendar activities planned for the year, which I will share with you as we go through them.

I printed the calendar from this site, glued it on to cardboard and laminated it for more durability (please note: you must glue the paper and cardboard together prior to laminating them, because if they are not glued, when you cut the calendar out, the paper and cardboard will separate, each being laminated on only one side).

For the clothes pin: I took a regular wooden clothes pin, colored it blue using a permanent marker, wrote “This month” on it using a black permanent marker, and then made and laminated a small 9 pointed star, which I stuck to the end of the clothes pin using a glue dot.

A beautiful, colorful addition to our circle time.

Our new school space, including workboxes!

Since we are not moving, I have instead spent a large part of the last two weeks cleaning out! I have boxes ready for donation, I sold a bunch of stuff on craigslist, and now my house feels a lot better! One of the goals of cleaning out for me, was to open up an area to create a school space. I have been reluctant to do this up until now, because I liked the relaxed feeling of doing our work wherever we felt comfortable, and didn't want to mimic a school room at home, BUT I was finding more and more that our books and projects were taking over the living room and dining room, oh, and the kitchen counter! Plus Rylan needs a space where his writing and art supplies can be easily accessible to him whenever he feels like drawing or writing, without me having to worry about little Damian getting into them and decorating the furniture! :) You will also remember the workboxes - absolutely wanted to start using that system, absolutely did not want them in my living room! ;) So, I took over half of our downstairs office (which is actually more of a sewing room than an office!) and this is what it looks like:
We put up Rylan's maps and dino charts on the wall, the talking globe is there too. A nice big table (looks smaller in the pic) which we got from IKEA, with space for both boys to work at. Workboxes are right next to it...actually I went for work drawers, not boxes...and right next to the those is a book shelf that has all of our writing/art supplies (I have a collection of these in the upstairs pantry too, so we can easily work on either floor without much prep time), all our school books, my teacher manuals, math and other manipulatives, educational games, my virtue materials, and Rylan's portfolio that we are building as he completes work.

There is one set for each boy. I started off with 6 drawers each, I think that is plenty for their ages, I can easily add on to it as time goes and there is a need.

The number labels are laminated and attached with velcro dots, so as they complete their work they can pull them off the drawer and stick them onto the sheet below, and put their completed work on top of the drawers.

I also made labels, which I don't have pictures of, that say "Work with Mom" and have a pic of me and the boys underneath, so they know to wait until I can assist them with whatever is in that particular drawer. I am sure I will be making more labels as time goes by and we get used to working with this new system.

On the other side of the room, I created a reading space. There is also our magnetic calendar (it is a Melissa and Doug one) which we use every morning to learn about days of the week, months of the year, etc.

The calendar has all kinds of little magnets like "swimming", "doctor's appointment", "4th of July", so we can add all the events of the week on Monday, then the kiddos can see the plan for the week ahead. Right next to the calendar is, of course, our virtue card that we are studying that week.

Speaking of virtue learning (there's a little hint)...tomorrow I will be sharing a bit more about the weekly themed post I mentioned starting a while back, which will be taking place every Wednesday!