Easy DIY Wall Calendar to Make with Your Kids
Calendar’s are a great way to practice numbers, weather, days of the week, and months of the year. But buying a new calendar online can be expensive, and we didn’t love any of the options on Amazon. So we decided to make our own calendar with supplies from the dollar store!
This option costs us less than $5 in supplies and took my son and I about an hour to complete. If we can do it, you can do it, too!
Calendar Time at Home
My three-year-old does not attend preschool yet, but he already loves our daily calendar time! He gets to tape on the pieces, tell me which items go up that day, and practice his counting. It’s a fun way to add a little bit of a routine to his day that he gets to look forward to on a daily basis.
We decided to make a wall calendar at home because my son started asking questions like “What day is today?”, “What day comes tomorrow?”, “When is my birthday coming?”, “What day does daddy stay home from work?”, and “How many days until…”. But he was having trouble remembering the order of the weeks and months without seeing it visually.
Counting Days
I’ve also noticed that since we started our calendar time at home, he’s mastered counting to 20 thanks to the numerical dates. He can now see those larger numbers in order to help him count along.
Checking the Weather
Because this is a DIY calendar, we decided to make weather cards but that’s optional. I will say that my son loves telling me about the weather now even when we’re not doing the calendar. He’s more aware of it, has learned a lot of new words pertaining to weather, and starts a daily conversation pertaining to weather.
Supplies for Your Own DIY Wall Calendar
This project can essentially be a free calendar with the bare minimum supplies up to however much you want to spend on the details. We found everything we needed at the Dollar Tree for this calendar, but you can also use supplies you already have if possible.
Here’s everything we used:
- 3 poster boards, any color
- Painter’s tape (or velcro)
- Colorful markers (or fun pens!)
- Scissors
- Ruler
All we had to buy at the dollar store was the poster boards.
Optional Add Ons
The best part of this DIY calendar is that there’s so many creative ways to tailor it to your children and your family. More fun ideas to add include washi tape, stickers, vinyl decals, or your favorite photos. Since making our calendar, my son has added quite a few animal stickers to our calendar.
If you do have a little money to spend, you can buy the cards for months, day of the week, or special days on Amazon.
Step-By-Step Instructions for a DIY Calendar
Here’s everything we did, but remember to tailor it to you and your child if it’s for personal use. While I was drawing the grid and cutting out some of the papers, I had my son color all over one of the poster boards to ‘decorate’ his calendar. Then, I used the colored on to make the month cards.
Draw a Simple Grid
This is maybe the most complicated part of the whole project, and it’s really not too complicated once you start. I used a ruler I already had at home to make the grid lines as straight as I could, but you can also just estimate if you don’t have one. Here’s all the measurements of my calendar on the first poster board:
The top section for the month, weather, and season is 4 inches with five rows and seven columns of squares below. Then, each square is 3 inches high and 4 inches wide.
Make Numbers
One of the second poster board, I cut out 31 squares of the same size. Then, I used a marker to write in the numbers. If your child can write, they can help with this step, too!
You can also try different shapes like circles or triangles if you want! This is a good opportunity to practice using scissors if your child is old enough as well. Read all about our scissor use for young kids here to help.
Days of the Week, Months, Season, & Weather
Next, I cut out rectangles for each day of the week, month, and season using the last poster board. You can decorate these however you want or have your child color them. We happened to have letter stickers we used for the months.
For the weather, we made a sunny, windy, cloudy, rainy, and snowy. Again, there’s so many easy ways to decorate these with drawings, stickers, or pictures.
Using Your Wall Calendar
After everything was cut, hang up your new calendar! We used heavier tape than the painter’s tape to hang it, but you can use magnetics, push pins, or anything that works where you want to put it.
Then, to hang up the number and signs each day just put a small piece of painter’s tape or a velcro dot on the back. Painter’s tape will peel off the poster board, so you can reuse everything next month!
We also like to sing this song while we do calendar time!