I found out about this Montessori concept years ago (thanks to Eve) but it wasn't until this week that I printed this calendar and introduced it to my children.

La poutres du temps - the time beam is an excellent, concrete way of introducing a child (or a classroom) to the concept of days, months and years. It is a linear calendar.

Our calendar is three meters long and the entire year is presented horizontally along the wall (we have ours in a passage way). The child can see the entire year in front of them! It is a great way for the children to learn all the months of the year and seasons. It makes it easy for the child to mark out dates, count down to their birthday or other significant events, to the end or the month or year and it also makes a really colourful decoration!  

We have a marker that moves along the beam to indicate 'today', the boys have also highlighted their birthdays. School holidays and celebrations will also be included. Small sticky notes would be perfect for this. 

Rather than a monthly calendar (which we still use) this gives a longer term picture. There are a few ways the calendar can be presented, some add a day at a time, use pegs or have lots of space for writing events, it can be tailored to suit your needs. 

Above examples at Odrai Le Blog, Alternative Montessori, Liv & Emy and Le blog de Natou.

Further reading and other fantastic linear calendars can be found at Planting Peas, Grow, Grow, Grow and Rachel and les petits pois. 

We are using this Linear Calendar 2016 Southern Hemisphere in English. It was really easy, I printed it on my home printer onto card, cut it out, glued it together and attached to a long wall using blu-tack. It was also fun to make this calendar ourselves, Otis is rather proud! I also recently made a perpetual calendar here.