Friday, August 22, 2008

Telling Time


Teaching a child to tell time takes time. Unless you have one of those rare children who gets it on the first try, you will probably need many times exposing your child to telling time in a variety of ways.

First, there are clocks everywhere a child looks. Clocks on walls, clocks on bedsides, clocks on bank signs, clocks on DVD players, in cars, and clocks called "Watches" worn on wrists.

This can be confusing to a child who sees not only different colored clock faces, different style of numbers and hands -- some with only dots where numbers should be, some with letters where numbers should be, and some with a red second hand, or a black second hand, or with no second hand at all.

Then there is the digital clock face and the analog clock face. Some have "hands" that don't look like hands pointing to two different numbers at once, and some just have numbers separated by dots.

Then there is the oral option of time telling, where you tell what time it is by saying words that they may not understand, such as "three" and "four" and "twenty to" and "a quarter after."

Telling time can be confusing. I will be posting a few different posts on how to help your child learn to tell time, with analog and digital clocks, to the hour, half hour, quarter hour, and ten and five minute intervals.