# What Are Months?

A month is a unit of time which is determined by the moon, which can be seen on the night sky. You’ve probably noticed that the moon sometimes looks like as a big round circle, and other times it looks thin and bent, just like a banana. The moon changes from being round to thin, and back to round again, in about $30$ days. The time it takes between two full moons, is what we know as a month.

There are $12$ months in one year, and they are January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December. Six months are known as half a year. Three months are known as a quarter. A month contains 4 weeks.

### Theknucklemethod

This is a helpful method for remembering how many days there are in each month.

On each of your knuckles, there is a month with 31 days. In the spaces between the knuckles, are months with 30 days, except February, which normally has $28$ days, but on leap years has $29$ days. Take a look at the illustration beneath this box.

1.
Make a fist with each of your hands, and put them next to each other.
2.
The first knuckle to the far left belongs to your pinkie and on top of it is January.
3.
The first month between two knuckles is February.
4.
Your other knuckle is March. Continue with this until you reach your last knuckle on your left hand.
5.
Your left hand ends with a knuckle, which is July with 31 days.
6.
Your right hand begins with a knuckle which is August, it also has 31 days.
7.
Then you’ll reach September between to knuckles, therefore it has 30 days.
8.
Continue to December on your last knuckle, which has 31 days.

When you use this method, you don’t need to remember how many days there are in every month. You only have to count your knuckles!

Math Vault

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