Back to School with Pete the Cat Calendar Cards

Use the Pete the Cat calendar cards to teach your children the calendar, the numbers 1-31, and enjoy our bundle of fun math and oral language calendar cards extension activities for your preschool or kindergarten settings.

Who is here today!
Create a "Who Is Here Today! board." In advance, have children color a shoe and write their name on it. Place shoes on the "Who Is Here Today" board. Every morning take “attendance” by letting children move their shoe with their name to the “I am here today” column of the chart.

Preschool Activities:

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Free shoe printable

Preschool Calendar Activities

We believe that calendar time in early childhood should be taught in a small setting and should be used to teach concepts other than time, such as numeracy, vocabulary (month, year, weekend), sequencing (yesterday, today, tomorrow), and patterning (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday).

Large Group
At the beginning of the month, place the month and the year card on the board or calendar pocket chart. Place all calendar numbers on the calendar pocket chart together with upcoming holidays and birthdays. Use a pointer to count the days of the month. Read the cards together with children and talk with them about the activities the class can do that month and which holiday(s) and birthdays they will be celebrating. Each day move a star, flower, etc. on the calendar number of the day. Ask children to tell you about the picture that is on the card.

Preschool Activities:

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Small Group or Independent Play
Make an interactive magnet calendar board. We used a Quartet® Magnetic Combination Calendar Board and placed the current month and the calendar number cards in a basket. With the dry-erase marker write the numbers of the month in the middle of the squares. Let children play with the numbers and match them to the written number on the calendar board. Encourage children to make up a story as they place the different calendar cards on the board.

Preschool Activities:

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The National Association for the Education of Young Children published a great article "Calendar Time for Young Children: Good Intentions Gone Awry" about calendar time in preschool settings. According to this article, lengthy daily calendar sessions in large group settings are not meaningful for young children. Calendar use requires children to understand not only concepts such as before and after but also the relative lengths of time or distance of past or future events from the present (Friedman 2000). The article suggests that calendar time is not an appropriate way to introduce young children to time concepts and explains that young children can understand the concepts of before and after but not the days of the week (today is, tomorrow is, yesterday was).

Preschool Calendar Cards Extension Activities

Preschool Activities:

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Pete the Cat Calendar Cards available inside our KidsSoup member site.

Preschool and Kindergarten Calendar Cards Math Activities

Number line
Let children use the cards to place them in sequence. Remove one card and ask children what card is missing.

Preschool Activities:

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What number comes next and before?
Choose three numbers in sequence. Ask children to find the number that comes next. What number comes before?

Odd and even numbers
Let children sort the cards by even and odd numbers. (The even numbers have a red frame and the odd numbers have a blue frame.)

Preschool Activities:

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Skip counting by 2
Children place the cards in order from 2-10.

Preschool and Kindergarten Calendar Cards Language Arts Activities

Story telling with the Pete the Cat calendar cards (Oral language skills)
Let children look for the Pete the Cat card and place a couple of the cards on the table face down. Then, let them pick a card from the pile and tell a story with Pete the Cat and the picture on the card. If more than one child is playing the game, let children take turns turning over a card and extend the story line.