"There are seven days, there are seven days, there are seven days in a week"

For those of you who may not know.... I am a nanny. I am a nanny for an adorable little three and a half year old boy. I'm sure you'll hear many stories from our daily adventures together. However, because he is not my child, I am going to refrain from using his name/nickname. For the sake of this blog, I am going to call him "little man".

So my little man is always wanting to know what we are doing. Sometimes it's the first thing he says to me when I walk in the door. "Where are we going today Befany?" You see, we go somewhere EVERY day. He also always wants to know when are we going to The Little Gym (his favorite), or when are we going to soccer (a new class that is right up there with his favorites), or when is that mommy is going to stay home again? I try to use real every day language with him. He slightly grasps some of the "yesterday", "tomorrow" and "on Monday" talk, but still asks all the time. I decided it was time for a visual aid.

I really liked the Melissa & Doug magnetic calendar, but thought it would be too over stimulating for him to start with. So of course, I decided to make one! :)

Here is most of what I started with. I found that really cheap board at Michael's. I also bought paint to match the kitchen it will be hung in, stickers, velcro, a brown craft pen, scrapbook paper, little wooden pieces, and a hook to hang it with.


I didn't take photos of every step, but I tried to get a few photos of the journey. First I painted the wood a cream color. Then I cut the scrapbook paper and glued it inside the frame of the wood. I had bought the spray adhesive, but unfortunately the spray top was missing. After that, I cut out green rectangles and wrote the day of the week on each. I glued those down and then put a layer of Mod Podge on top. I chose these colors because this is going in their kitchen and I didn't want to use bold reds and blues. Also, green is little man's favorite color.

I had already painted the little squares cream. After that I glued on the stickers and printed pictures of the places we go the most. I put a layer of Mod Podge on their as well. This is a picture of them drying.
I used the little circular sticky velcro. I wanted it to be interactive so little man could have ownership in his day. I plan on teaching the days of the week, seven days in a week, and terms like today/tomorrow/yesterday. I also added a brown ribbon in order to hang it up with. This is what the finished product looked like.
A closer look....
Here are some of the extra's. I think I'm going to buy one of those plain wood boxes at the craft store and have little man paint it. He loves to paint, an then we'll have a cute place for all of the extras.
I sent pictures to K (mom boss) and she sent me THREE emails back freaking out about how fabulous it is. I can't wait to put it to use.