At the beginning of the summer, Emma came to me with a problem: she didn’t know how to tell analog time. She had a unit on telling time in school, and did fine on her test, but the concept behind the answers hadn’t stuck. Luckily, I was one step ahead of her – ALEX Toys had sent us a Ready, Set, Tell time! (affiliate link) set to review! This teaching kids to tell time kit comes with a very sturdy cardboard clock, with plastic hands that go round and round. The hour hand slowly moves from hour to hour as you spin the minute hand around, so that kids can see the connection between the minutes going round and hours passing by. The minute hand clicks its way around the clock in five-minute increments. The kit also comes with cards and other activities designed to help kids tell time, and to help them understand how a day’s activities are broken up into hours.
Emma enjoyed reading through the cards that came with this kit, and the three younger kids enjoyed listening! The cards do a nice job of establishing how time passes over the course of a day, with activities that will be familiar to most children. I liked that the cards ask questions that help kids draw connections between the times on the cards and their own lives, as shown in this brief clip:
Do your kids know how to read an analog clock? How did you teach them?
MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.
We got this set hand me down. I have seen the kids play with it but I am not sure if my daughter knows or not. hmm, I will have to watch them a little.
Emma Grace recently learned to tell time. We used a combination of books and iPad apps. It’s awesome to see that she understands this concept when I ask her what time it is!
That’s great that she understands time so well now!
yOU SURE KNOW HOW TO MAKE GREAT ADVERTISEMENT1 :) WAs sick so I bet I missed quite a bit, hope the house sale goes smoothly.
Sorry you’ve been sick! The house sale *should* go smoothly – and hopefully we’ll find something in CA!
Here’s hoping everyone in both our houses stays healthy for a while now!
We’re just now getting into analog. J was given an analog football watch that he wants to use. He’s been doing digital time for over a year (when we tried to convince him to stay in his room and quiet until 7:00a). I bought puzzle time telling cards from J’s bookfair earlier in the year that we’ll be using hopefully soon.
I’m impressed that J is getting into this already!
John wants to teach J how to read a binary clock. Maybe that will be our next step after analog.
Fun! We have a friend here who has a binary watch :)
We use a little cardboard clock I printed on photo paper from the web and glued to cardboard, with a brad holding the hands. I say “today we will eat lunch around 2pm, please make 2pm on the clock.” When they do, I ask them where the long hand is and where the short hand is. That was in our Saxon Kindy math, and I’m sure there will be more in the Saxon Math 1 curriculum.
Emma reads so nicely!!
I love the idea of integrating time telling into the days’ events. That’s a great way to teach kids time!
We used a play clock similar to the Alex toy one but it also had the minutes on the outside of the hour numbers. I also had matching flashcards with the time written out 8:45 and then the kids had to make that time on the clock.
What is so confusing is the minutes … so we found that the clock that had 1 (with 5 on the outside), 2 (with 10 on the outside) etc. to be invaluable.
When Anna was younger, I was looking for a clock that would move hours and minutes “in sync” and wasn’t able to find it. Looks like this Alex kit just does that. We do have some analog clocks in the house, so she can tell analog time and was even “consulting” her older friends in Y on their time-related homework. It’s not simple for many children, since after all it sort of involves skip counting and understanding that the number, say, 7, doesn’t mean 7, it actually means 35 minutes.
Sounds like the Judy clocks we use at schools, the minute hand moves the hour hand.
My little guy can tell certain times, like when the long hands are on the quarter times such as 15, 30, 45 and o’clock. But I think this has more to do with memorization than getting the idea that the long hand counts in increments of 5.
Lila’s (in 4th grade)teacher told me this past year that Lila didn’t know how to tell time, or was having trouble with it. I realized all the clocks in our house are digital! Oops, so we’re working on it just using free programs online :) Hope your family is having a wonderful summer.