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. 32-34.

The new red, red, red, orange leaf pattern on the October calendar gives children the chance to see, hear, and feel the predictability of a repeating pattern. Much of the fun of discovering patterns is seeing how they help us figure out what may come next. Each Monday we can ask students to first predict the new day’s piece and then put up Saturday through Monday’s pieces to check.

At the beginning of the month, with only a few pieces up, asking, “What do you see?” is often enough to get children talking. On the first day of the month, invite children with October birthdays to count the days up to their birthdays and place their markers on the calendar. Then use the birthdays for some problem solving. How many days ’til our next birthday?