Developed in partnership with Education Services Australia.

The Australian Curriculum sets the goal for what all students should learn as they progress through their school life. Skills in the Foundation Year curriculum include:

• knowing the days of the week
• matching typical events to particular days of the week
• using terms such as yesterday, today, tomorrow, morning, afternoon, daytime and night-time.

It’s easy to help your child practise these skills as part of everyday life – just use these simple ideas.

Talk about the days

To master the days your child needs to learn two related elements – the names and order of the days of the week, and how to apply the relative time concepts of yesterday, today and tomorrow. The key is repetition, so use ideas such as these to give your child lots of practice:

• have a calendar where your child can see it
• talk about what day it is today, what day it was yesterday, and what day it will be tomorrow
  
  If it’s Wednesday today, what day was it yesterday?
  
  What day will it be tomorrow?
• pretend you’ve forgotten the day and ask your child
  
  I’m so confused, I know that yesterday was Friday but I can’t remember what today is. Can you remind me?
• when talking about an event in the future, name the day and count how many days it is from today
  
  We’re going to grandma’s on Saturday, that’s one, two, three days from today!
• encourage your child to use the calendar to work out how many days (or sleeps!) until a special day
  
  How many sleeps is it until your birthday?
• talk about regular activities on different days of the week
  
  On Tuesdays we take your brother to piano and then we go to swimming lessons.
• talk about weekdays versus the weekend. What things are different? What things are the same? What are you going to do this weekend?
• make a set of cards with the names of the days of the week, mix them up, and challenge your child to sort them into the right order. Or, pick a random card and quiz each other. Make a few deliberate mistakes and let your child correct you
• ask your child to draw something they did today, and label their picture with the name of the day. Do the same thing every day for a week, then mix the pictures up and ask your child to put them in the right order. You can help your child turn the final product into a book, a poster, or a present for someone special!

Go online

For online reinforcement, Two days away will give your child practice at:

• days of the week.

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