Counting Down with Calendars


CalendarDecember is a big month for counting down—how many shopping days until a favorite holiday…how many school days until winter vacation…how many seconds until people start yelling “HAPPY NEW YEAR!”

Young learners can practice counting down all kinds of things with SMILE’s Countdown: Counting with a Calendar activity. Created by TERC, this activity encourages learners to express the amount of time they’re counting down in varied and combined units including months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds.

Counting down and planning projects according to units of time are important skills throughout life, whether they’re used to pull a batch of holiday cookies from a hot oven just at the right moment, or to complete an outdoor engineering project on schedule (and within budget) before winter weather brings work to a frigid halt.

With today’s busy life schedules, calendars are tools we can all use in some way.  Howtosmile.org offers many free fun calendars in English and Spanish, with activities that connect learners to themes like Mazes and Codes, Physical Fitness, Money and Patterns, Animals and more.

Calendars make great gifts, so try “shopping” howtosmile.org for free, colorful calendars you can use all year-round.  Happy calendaring!