A Calendar of Firsts is a record kept year after year, on the same pages — a small history of when things happen in the place where you live. The first daffodils in early spring. The first ripe blackberries of summer. The first snow of winter. Each year, you add a new date next to the entries already there, and over time the pages tell you a story.
Charlotte Mason mentioned calendars only once in Home Education, in a single passage on page 54: “It is a capital plan for the children to keep a calendar — the first oak-leaf, the first tadpole, the first cowslip, the first catkin, the first ripe blackberries, where seen, and when.”
What she referenced briefly, the people of the House of Education practiced steadily. Christine Cooper, the Reverend A. Thornley, and Agnes Drury each wrote in the Parents’ Review about how the calendar lived in PNEU schools and homes — sometimes as a personal record in a child’s nature notebook, sometimes as a class artifact made together by the children of a village school.
The form of the calendar in this book grew out of that practice, shaped especially for the family, for younger children, and for your particular place in the world.
The year is divided into twelve months and thirty-six small sections — three per month, roughly ten days each. Each section holds the firsts your family discovers. In addition, in the way of the Japanese micro-seasons, there is a space for the name you may eventually give that stretch of time. (e.g., The time the daffodils bloom. The time the oak leaves out.) Names for that space of time in your locale — not for any other place. You will also find ample space for drawings, notes, poems, pressed flowers or whatever you and your family would like to fill that space with.
This calendar is akin to a perpetual journal, so you will not complete it in one year. Each year you will catch a few more things, and the pages will fill in their own time.
Pages: 59
Format: Digital
A Sample
Printing
This calendar is a digital download, so you can print it at home on standard cardstock and put it in a three-ring binder. If you want to paint inside, mixed-media paper or watercolor paper from a craft store will give you a more comfortable surface; you can print on these with most home printers. Alternatively, you can have it printed through Humble Heart Press and wire bound so the pages lay flat. Either way, the calendar should last for many years.
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