A calendar shows one month. The columns are the days of the week and the numbers are the dates. To find the day of the week for a date, find the date and look straight up its column to the heading. Each week is 7 days, so the same day of the week comes every 7 dates. To count the days from one date to another, count the jumps, not the start day: from 5 to 19 is 19 − 5 = 14 days. To go into the next month, use how many days this month has, then keep counting.
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Move the hands
3:00
The short hand moves between hour numbers as the minutes pass. One full turn of the long hand is sixty minutes.
Words to know
- date
- the number of the day in the month
- weekday
- a day of the week, like Monday or Saturday
- month
- one page of the calendar; it has 28 to 31 days
Worked examples
1 March 2027 is a Monday. What day of the week is 17 March 2027?
- 1.17 is 16 days after 1, which is 2 weeks and 2 days.
- 2.Two days after Monday is Wednesday.
= Wednesday
How many days is it from 5 March to 19 March?
- 1.Count the jumps, not the start day.
- 2.19 − 5 = 14.
= 14
March has 31 days. Today is 27 March. How many days is it until 4 April?
- 1.27 March to 31 March is 31 − 27 = 4 days.
- 2.Then 4 more days to 4 April: 4 + 4 = 8.
= 8
For parents
Method: Find the date, then read up the column
What to say: Where is the 1st this month? How many days does this month have?
Common mistakes:
- Counts the starting day as well as the jumps, so a number of days comes out one too many.
- Counts only the days in between the two dates, leaving out the last one.
- Assumes the 1st of the month is in the first column (Monday), instead of reading where it really is.
- Uses the wrong number of days in the month (30 or 31) instead of reading it from the calendar.
- Finds the nth weekday by counting rows, even when the first row has no such day.
- Treats 'the third Friday' as three weeks after the first Friday, so lands one week too late.