Days, Months and Telling the Time

Method

1. Talk through the child's own day out loud in order, using first, next, then and last, before introducing any written words or a calendar picture.
2. Teach the seven day names in a fixed order, as a chant or song, starting from Monday, so the sequence becomes automatic before the child is asked to reason about it.
3. Use yesterday, today and tomorrow with a real calendar or a simple three-day picture strip that the adult moves along each morning, so the child sees the words shift day by day rather than treating them as fixed labels.
4. Directly correct the shifting-label misconception: if a child insists 'yesterday' is always the same day, point at today's date on the calendar and ask what the day before that date is, showing the answer changes every single day.
5. Teach the twelve month names in order using a real calendar, pointing out the child's own birthday month and other family birthdays or celebrations to anchor the abstract list to something personal and memorable.
6. Introduce morning, afternoon, evening and night as the four broad parts of a day, and sort familiar activities (eating breakfast, having lunch, going to bed) into the correct part of the day.
7. Practise ordering three or four everyday events using first, next, then and last, without needing any exact clock times, since reading clock times belongs to a different topic.

Practice questions

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