First Grade Calendar Routines {Five for Friday}

I'm so glad to have another great week of first grade in the books AND I'm so glad it's the weekend!

If you've been reading my blog for a while you know that I was new to first grade last year. Before first grade I'd spent all my time in 4th, 5th, and 6th grades. I am going to confess that the thoughts of calendar time stressed me out!! It was elusive. I polled everyone I worked with about what they did during calendar, I read blogs, and did a lot of Pinterest searches. What if I did the wrong things? Was there a special formula? 

Thankfully there is no wrong way to do calendar! But there are a lot of amazing ways to do it right! There were a lot of great ideas out there about calendar time and it really helped me out a lot, so I wanted to pay it forward and link up to share some of my favorite routines for calendar.

Last year I used straws to count the days in the place value chart. This year I switched to the base 10 blocks and I'll never go back to straws. Already I can see my students starting to gain an understanding of place value. 

This was something I used last year and loved! It's even better this year because I'm using it along with the base 10 blocks, so when we do the add it together part it makes my teacher heart so happy!

If you are interested in it you can click here to go to Home and School Creations.

Have you heard about Blendspace? 

It's an amazing tool that lets you blend together all different types of media into one lesson. It is super easy to use. 

As soon as I read about it this summer I signed up and started this calendar lesson. I love using YouTube videos in the classroom, but I hate getting the ads on screen with students watching. YIKES! 

Since I've been using Blendspace that hasn't been a problem at all. Another perk is that the lesson stops after each video. Last year I just created a playlist on YouTube, but the problem with that is the songs play continuously. Since it didn't stop after each video I had to do acrobatics across the room to get to the computer and stop the videos. Because we all know if I don't stop it and Adding with a Pirate comes on we have to listen to it. Every. Time. 

I wanted to incorporate some tally mark practice in to calendar, so I made these little posters. Last year I tried keeping a tally mark for every day of the school year and that didn't work out so good for us. I thought a month would be a little more manageable. 

Click the picture to check them out at TPT. 

Of course the trusty countdown subtraction problem. Can be a little depressing at times when you're having one of those weeks, but I'm hopeful that all that repetition helps the second grade math teachers! 

Click here to visit Sara Schear on TPT. 

I bought this adorable 10 frame (180 frame?!) on TPT this summer and we are loving it! It makes a really nice visual for the kids. There were some ooh and aahs when they noticed it, how tall it was, and how many boxes we'd have to fill up before first grade was over. Click here if you'd like to see this one from Firstie Kidoodles. 

What are you some of your favorite calendar time routines? I'm always looking for something else to add!