You asked about My Calendar of Firsts book I mentioned in the 'Signs of Spring' post. Until I was introduced to this one a couple of years ago at the ChildLight Conference, we used a regular wall calendar to jot notes on days - which works great. I used the Backyard Birds, like the one pictured at right, to record the weather, keep a list of the bird sightings in our yard, and write about happenings in the forest from our walks. 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. The next year they will know when and where to look out for their favourites, and will, every year, be in a condition to add new observations (Mason, vol. 1, p. 54)
This notebook is a little different in the set up. It is set up in columns with two days per page. It has a space at the top to fill in the dates of the year by hand - allowing you to start whenever you choose, beginning with a season or school year, or any month you like. And below in each column is just a lined section. This shows a running list from year to year of the "firsts" for that day. For example, when I put in my entry for 'first robins' this year on March 10, I noticed that on March 8 last year the page shows: '2012 - first robins return to yard!' Won't it be fun to begin to fill the pages; I am looking forward to showing my grandchildren, years from now, what happened on their birthdays or finding when the robins came to join us for spring each year!
