March

Overview

Church Calendar is a printable family devotional calendar. Each month has a key verse, a big picture question, Sunday lessons, and weekday devotionals with discussion questions and encouragements for your family dinner table.

First-Time Setup

To use AI features (generating devotional content and theme colors), you need an API key:

1. Click Settings in the top-left toolbar.
2. Under AI Configuration, choose a provider (Claude or OpenAI).
3. Paste your API key into the API Key field.
4. Select a model. Smaller models (Haiku, GPT-4o Mini) are faster and cheaper. Larger models produce higher quality content.

Navigating Months

Use the ← and → arrows in the center of the toolbar to move between months. The current month and year are shown between the arrows.

Editing the Header

Click directly on any of these to edit them in place:

• Year — top-left above the month name
• Key Verse label — the "KEY VERSE" heading (you can rename it)
• Key Verse text — the verse content area
• Big Picture Question label — the "BIG PICTURE QUESTION" heading below the calendar
• Big Picture Question text — the question content area

When you click into any of these fields, a small A− / A+ toolbar appears to adjust the font size. Changes are saved automatically.

Editing Sunday Lessons

Click any Sunday cell to open the editor with three fields:

• Lesson Title — the name of the lesson (e.g., "Tower of Babel"). Shown on the calendar.
• Verse Reference — the scripture citation (e.g., "Genesis 11:1-9"). Shown on the calendar.
• Lesson Context — detailed notes about the lesson. Not shown on the calendar, but used by the AI when generating weekday devotionals for that week.

Click Save to keep changes, Clear to remove all content from that day, or Cancel to discard.

Editing Weekday Content

Click any weekday cell (Mon–Sat) to edit:

• Discussion Question — a family dinner-table question tied to the week's Sunday lesson.
• Encouragement — a short, actionable statement for the family.
• Custom AI Instructions — optional guidance for AI generation on this specific day (e.g., "Focus on patience" or "Make it about siblings"). Saved with the day and used whenever this day is regenerated.

Click Regenerate with AI to have the AI rewrite just this day's question and encouragement, taking into account the week's Sunday lesson, the month's context, and your custom instructions. The result fills in the question and encouragement fields for you to review before saving.

Generating Devotionals with AI

Instead of writing each weekday by hand, you can have AI generate them:

1. Fill in your Sunday lessons first (at minimum, a lesson title).
2. Optionally add a key verse, big picture question, and lesson context for richer results.
3. Click Generate Devotionals in the toolbar.
4. The AI creates a question and encouragement for each empty weekday (Mon–Sat) following each Sunday lesson.

Generation processes one week at a time and shows progress in the button. Days that already have content are skipped, so you can manually write some and generate the rest.

If a Sunday's weekdays spill into the next month, the AI handles that automatically.

Additional Context

Below the calendar is an Additional Context text area (visible only on screen, not when printing). Use this to give the AI extra information about the month's theme, curriculum notes, or anything else that should influence the generated content.

Color Mode

For a more visual way to adjust colors without the settings panel dimming the view:

1. Click Colors in the toolbar to enter color mode.
2. Click any element on the calendar (day cells, headers, text, background) to open a color picker.
3. The color picker is draggable — grab its header bar to move it out of the way.
4. Changing the color updates the linked setting globally (e.g., clicking a day number changes the title color everywhere).
5. Check "Only change this element" to apply the color to just the clicked element — useful for highlighting a single cell or label.
6. Click Colors again or press Esc to exit color mode.

Color mode and select mode are mutually exclusive — entering one exits the other.

Customizing the Theme

Open Settings to customize:

• Background — pick a color or upload an image
• Title Font — the font for the month name, day numbers, and labels
• Body Font — the font for questions, encouragements, and verse text
• Calendar Colors — header bar, cell backgrounds, borders, and the Sunday tint

All changes preview live and save automatically.

AI Theme Generation

At the bottom of the Settings panel, click Randomize Font / Colors to have the AI design a color and font theme based on your calendar's content. The AI reads the month's lessons, verses, and questions to create a palette that matches the mood.

Selecting and Clearing Multiple Days

To clear content from several days at once:

1. Click Select in the toolbar to enter selection mode.
2. Click and drag across cells to select a rectangular region.
3. Shift-drag to add more cells to your existing selection.
4. Alt-click a cell to remove it from the selection.
5. Click Clear Cells to delete content from all selected days.
6. Click Cancel or press Esc to exit selection mode without changes.

If any selected days have custom AI instructions, you'll be asked whether to clear those too or keep them for future regeneration.

Printing

Click Print in the toolbar to open the browser print dialog. The calendar is formatted for landscape 8.5 x 11" paper. The toolbar, settings, additional context, and other UI elements are automatically hidden when printing.

You can also save as PDF using your browser's "Save as PDF" print option.

Keyboard Shortcuts

• Esc — close any open modal, settings panel, or exit selection/color mode