Calendar and Leap Year Math

A calendar is a table, a clock for the year and a math tool all at once. This pack gives children in Grades 3 to 5 ten pages that use it: the knuckle trick for the days in each month, word problems with weeks and days, elapsed time that crosses the end of a month, patterns in a calendar grid, and a data page with a tally and a scaled bar graph.

Then comes the big question: why do we have leap years? Children read how a year of about 365.2422 days leads to the rule (divisible by 4, except century years unless divisible by 400), test it on real years such as 1900, 2000 and 2100, count leap years in a range and solve puzzles about people born on February 29.

Every grid is a printed month that starts on a Tuesday, so the answers work in any year. Teacher notes give a five-session plan and ways to adjust the work for each grade. Inside: teacher notes, ten children’s pages (including a check-up of 8 questions) and a worked answer key. Print in black and white on any printer. The free sample is the teacher notes and the reading on why we have leap years.