An interactive calendar for a 4 year old

Every year I do an interactive calendar for my daughter. I print it out in black and white at home and then I color it with markers and laminate the little parts for her. Every day (or the evening before) we cross of the date, change the day  and weather and pick out a new shape and letter. I cut a small hole in the paper for our "cards" where I put a paperclip, the paperclip is also taped on on the backside of the paper.

The calendar has worked great for her, this is how she got a better grasp of the days of the week and when things are happening. Since its a paper calendar we write in events under the date if something special is happening, like a birthday, dentist appointment, a visit from grandma, etc. Sometimes if we have stickers that fit we use those, like a dog print for when our dog had a vet appointment. It feels a bit more personal to me that we can add events and special dates for her, unlike similar ones you buy in the store where its all plastic, and no room for writing. Even if its just a little room here, as a 4 year old she doesn't really need more.

Saturday and Sunday are shaded in so she can keep track of the days when my husband isn't working.
Since she attends preschool 3 days a week, Tuesday-Thursday I color those days in a different color. 

I'm a bit early doing the calendar this year, but last year I had to finish it during the holidays, and I'm trying to avoid that this year. I'm considering going to the library to print it out in color, just to save time, but sine we moved I don't know if they have a color printer here, so I did it both in color and black and white.

It takes some time to do it from scratch since I did all of the illustrations on my own, so I figured that I'd put it up here in case someone else would like to use it. You don't really need to laminate everything or have it in color, but it looks nicer and is a lot more childproof. My daughter has been switching out the cards since she was 2 on her own. I color in the same color on the "card" for the days I do on the actual calendars, its a bit of work but it helped my daughter understand what days it was before she could read. If you look at the picture of the example you see what I mean with "Monday" being in the same color both on the card and the calendar.

The cards (shapes, letters, days, season and weather) only needs to be done once, its just the months that needs to be printed out every year. The little marks next to/underneath each month is where the paperclips should go. I've placed a link at the bottom to my google doc account, and anyone who wants it can download it. Its just PDF files so there should be no problem opening it, the first page of each document shows how it should look when you attach the cards. (If someone one wants a Swedish version of this just let me know, my daughter is bilingual so we have both).

Anyways.. if anyone wants to use it its here, both with and without color,  I hope you enjoy it! It would be fun if all the work I did got to see more use than just our little family.

Calendar in color

Calendar in black and white