This kinda worked but had a number of flaws. When I first started teaching time in my homeschool 5 years ago, I actually printed off a clock worksheet and colored it myself! Color-Coded Clocks for Teaching Kids to Tell Time Once they have that skill down pat – THEN introduce the minute hand. Use your color-coded clock, time worksheets, workbooks, and real clocks to drill your kid on what the hour hand is pointing at. Continue to ignore the minute hand until later. Now focus on mastering knowing what the hour is. These rooms are much easier to understand and read when you have a color-coded clock! (Psst! I have some examples of color-coded clocks below) Tell your child that each hour has its own “ room.” The hour has not changed until the hour hand has passed out of that “room.” Ignore the minute hand and focus on only the hour hand. The Easy Way to Teach Your Child to Tell Timeįrom the very beginning, use a color-coded clock to teach your child to tell time. If they want to learn to tell time on a real analog clock, that hour hand is just as important, if not more important to learn. Then you have to backtrack and try to explain that actually that sneaky hour hand has been moving while they’ve been carefully watching the minute hand this whole time. To them, the hour hand is clearly pointing at the 4. They will say it’s 4:50 and get very frustrated when you say it’s actually 3:50. This becomes very clear when your child is asked to read a time like 3:50. They are looking at a worksheet or a toy clock and not being taught that on a real clock the HOUR HAND MOVES. The huge disconnect that your child is having during this process is that the focus is ALL on the minute hand. Why Teaching Time in This Way Does Not Work Once this is mastered, the child will start to count by 1’s to find more precise times like 3:28. Then the child is taught to recognize time marks like 3:15, 3:30, and 3:45, always carefully skip counting by 5s to find out where that minute hand is. The child is taught to recognize the top of the hour first through matching, labeling, or even drawing hands on the clock. But I have noticed that most of them tend to teach telling time in the same way. How Most Math Curriculums Teach Kids to Tell TimeĪs you can tell from my curriculum reviews, we have gone through a lot of math curriculum during our homeschooling years. Depending on your child’s strengths, consider teaching this part of time 6 months to a year later. If your child doesn’t already have a basic understanding of fractions, that will obviously be difficult to teach while also telling time. This is not completely necessary, but many math curriculums want kids to understand sayings like “half past” or “quarter till.” Once you get past 20, kids really get the hang of it quickly. This takes on a “sing-song” quality and kids LOVE to do it. I usually stand up with my child and have them stomp back and forth from one foot to another while emphasizing the multiples of 10: five, TEN, fifteen, TWENTY, twenty-five, THIRTY, and so on. ![]() I think counting by 5’s is one of the easiest levels of skip counting for kids to get. 3 Steps to Do BEFORE Teaching Your Child to Tell Time Knowing how to read them is a life skill (and math skill!) that your kid should know how to do confidently. Yes, we all have phones and digital clocks all over the house, but analog clocks still exist in beautiful watches, clocks at the airport, doctor’s office, and other waiting rooms. When it comes to analog clocks, it is the same way. My second grader would occasionally tap me on the shoulder and say, “What does that say, Mom? I can’t read those letters.” Everything from wall decor items to historical documents are written in cursive and I want my kid to know how to read them. ![]() They will type everything that is important anyways, right?īut, I found out really quickly that there are things written ALL AROUND us in cursive. People told me that teaching my kids to write in cursive was a waste of time. In fact, analog clocks are a lot like cursive to me. I know this simple teaching hack will make all the difference when trying to teach your kids to tell time! But, Aren’t Analog Clocks a Thing of the Past? Does My Kid Even Need to Know How to Read One? I was very blessed to stumble onto some excellent advice during my first year of homeschooling, so I am happy to pass it along to you! Many parents will quickly find out though that learning to tell time can be tricky and is definitely a perishable skill. It seems like an easy enough skill that most people pick up in elementary school. Struggling to teach your kid how to tell time with an analog clock?
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