Young children aren’t born with a sense of time. If they were, I am quite sure that parents would quickly distort it with the many times we say “just a minute” when actually we need more than one minute. Learning to tell time is an important but often challenging skill. Why? There are so many concepts and skills involved.
Learning to tell time involves recognizing numbers, counting up to sixty by ones, counting by fives, understanding fractions such as one-half hour, quarter after and so on, conceptualizing the big hand and the little hand and then we throw in analog and digital clocks. No wonder it is such a challenge.
Never fear. You can teach it. They can learn it. The biggest mistakes made in teaching telling time are beginning before the child has the developmental skills to be successful or trying to teach too much at once.
How do you know when your child is ready? Ages will vary greatly so look for skills. If your child can recognize numbers 1-12, then you can begin working on hours. Point out the hours on both digital and analog clocks. Focus on only the hours for a while until your child is comfortable.
Here’s the rub with analog clocks. Children often get the big hand and the little hand confused. An hour is longer and a minute is shorter, so doesn’t it make sense that the minute hand would be shorter? Also, they start by learning hours and the minute hand is dominant to their eye and naturally drawn to the number it is pointing to. This confusion is completely normal.
Here’s a way to help. Create your own clock with a paper plate, light colored hands and a brad and use stickers and markers for the numbers. Write the words hour and minute on the hands. Explain that hour is a short word. Say it together to “feel” how short it is. Minute is a longer word. Say it together to “feel” how it is longer. This will really help visual learners and if they use this for a while they will be able to “picture” the words on other analog clocks as well. Look at real clocks, both analog and digital, and focus only on the hour until they can do this. If you use work sheets, again, don’t move on too quickly.
Before you move to half hours be sure your child can count to thirty and understand that it is half of sixty. Time is so abstract. Use hands on lessons like cutting an apple in half. You can also draw a clock on paper and let them cut it in half. Most kids are delighted when they can now read 6:00 and 6:30. Telling time becomes even more fun.
Your child will need to be able to count by fives well before understanding the full 5 after, 10 after, 15 after system. Practicing by counting with nickels can help. The challenge here is that kid’s brains have to rename the numbers as 1 becomes 5 after, 2 becomes 10 after and so on. It starts to get hard again so go slowly and keep smiling!
Many clocks don’t have the actual numbers on minute marks. Invest in one that does, make your own or use work sheets so that they can count the marks and discover over and over that there are 5 marks to the 1, 10 marks to the 2 and so on. It helps to color code minute marks and the minute hand in one color and the hour marks (numbers) and the hour hand in another color.
To explain quarter after and quarter ’til, your child will need a handle on ¼ fractions. Again use hands on experiments with fruits, pizzas or pies and let them actually cut a paper clock into quarters. Also, understanding that the coin, quarter, is ¼ of a dollar also goes hand in hand with this. Give children plenty of time to and practice to digest these last concepts.
Telling Time Games: Learning to tell time is always more fun and rewarding with games. We enjoy the board game, Telling Time Bingo, by Trend Enterprises. You can easily make your own games. You can write 10 analog times and 10 matching digital times on index cards and play a speed matching game with the cards face up or a memory matching game with the cards face down. With only a sheet of paper, a ruler and a marker you can easily make your own Bingo cards with analog times, digital times or both.
Worksheets on Telling Time: You can print free worksheets for telling time at Time-for-Time but please remember that worksheets should only be a small part of teaching. Real clocks and hands-on teaching will offer more concrete and fun learning. When your child is telling time and ready for the challenge of telling time word problems, edhelper has free printable work sheets as well.
Your local librarian can help you find books that may be helpful and fun to enjoy while you’re learning. Here’s a list of good ones: Big Hand, Little Hand by Judith Herbst, Bunny Day: Telling Time from Breakfast to Bedtime by Rick Walton, Little Rabbit’s First Time Book by Alan Baker and Telling Time with Mama Cat by Dan Harper.
Be sure to talk about time and clocks in relaxed, family times and not just during “teaching” time when the child feels pressured. Remember that they are learning and always point out anything they got right first, for example, “You got the hour exactly right! Now, can you recheck the minute and see if you get something different?” “Time flies when you’re having fun,” and learning to tell time goes by faster when it is fun too!
