Time Goes On - Days and Months

A calendar is a visual tool organized like a grid or table. The vertical columns usually represent the days of the week (Monday to Sunday), while the horizontal rows show the progression of dates. It helps us keep track of days, weeks, and months in a year.

There are $7$ days in a single week. The sequence always follows the same order: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. After Sunday, the cycle starts again with Monday.

A year is divided into $12$ months. These can be visualized as a repeating loop or cycle starting from January and ending in December. The sequence is: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, and December.

Months vary in length. A common visual method to remember this is the 'Knuckle Trick'. When you make a fist, the raised knuckles represent months with $31$ days, and the dips/spaces between knuckles represent months with $30$ days (except February, which has $28$ or $29$ days).

February is a special month. In an ordinary year, it has only $28$ days. However, in a 'Leap Year', it has $29$ days. This extra day is added because the Earth takes about $365 \frac{1}{4}$ days to orbit the sun, so we add one full day every four years.

Dates are written in a shorthand format, often as $DD/MM/YYYY$. For example, $26/01/2024$ represents the $26^{\text{th}}$ day of the $1^{\text{st}}$ month (January) in the year $2024$. This helps us identify any specific moment in time clearly.

The passage of time can be measured in blocks. $1$ year is equal to $12$ months, or approximately $52$ weeks, or $365$ days (except in leap years). Understanding these conversions helps in planning long-term activities.