Instructor Notes:

For materials preparations, click ‘Back to Main Menu’ button and select ‘Getting Started – EDC Setup’.

Read Every Day Counts Teacher’s Guide, Kanter and Gillespie, Great Source, 2005 or 2012 edition, p. 32.

Mondays and Fridays are good days to focus on the calendar. Each Friday children have another row of pattern pieces to consider. At the beginning of the month, with only a few pieces up, asking “What do you notice so far?” is often enough to spark lots of discussion.

On the first day of the month let children with October birthdays figure out where to place their markers on the calendars. Then they can be used for problem solving. How many days ’til our next birthday? On what day of the week will our next birthday arrive? What will the pattern piece look like on this day?

On Oct. 3rd or 6th, when a green rectangle appears, you might ask children to tell the shape’s name and what they know about rectangles. If they say rectangles have 2 short sides and 2 long sides, we can take the month to introduce and revisit the idea that rectangles need only have 4 right angles, and therefore, some may have two long sides and two short sides, but others may have all sides the same. (The idea that rectangles include the squares sometimes meets strong resistance!)