How to teach your child to tell time!

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Knowing how to tell time can be challenging for a child. I will show you a few clock tricks I use to help my children master telling time.
 
First let your child know that :
 
There are 24 hours in a day.
 
12 hours are in the morning known as am
 
12 hours are in the evening known as pm
 
There are 60 minutes in 1 hour
 
There are 60 seconds in 1 minute
 
The clock can be intimidating with all the numbers and the two hands and it can be hard to know where to start. I like to tell my children:   Time goes fast when your growing. First your little and then your big. This helps them understand what to read first and what number to write down first. You write down the small hand first  and this tells you what hour it is. You then put two dots (think of the two point as the two hands which separate the hour from the minutes). Then you write down the minutes by looking at the big hand.
 
I like to write the 12 hours on the inside and then the minutes on the outside of the clock to help my children make better sense of the clock. I also like to put 00 up to 09 for the minutes. There are five minutes between each number on the clock. Encourage your child to practice counting by 5’s to help tell time.
 
 

 

 
We also made a shadow clock:
 
Before there were clocks people used a shadow clock to tell time. The position of the shadow can tell you about what time it is.  It is noon when the sky reaches the highest point in the sky. Now this does change depending on the time of year it is and the shadow clock is not as accurate as a digital clock.  But it lets you know approxamently what time it is. Plus it is fun to watch the shadow move every hour. 
 
 

 To make a shadow clock: You need a hard card board paper, a jar, pencil, marker, and hot glue.

 Cut out a circle. Put a hole in the middle of the circle.

 Put a jar on top of the circle and glue the circle to the jar.

 Put a pencil inside the circle. It is a good idea to glue the pencil to the paper so that if the jar tips over the pencil will not move.

 Put your shadow clock in an area where the sun rises the earliest and where it sets the latest. This way you will have more shadows to mark on your shadow clock.

 We started at 12pm and every hour I had a timer on my phone that reminded me to go with my kids and look at the shadow clock. 12 pm until 7pm we saw and recorded a shadow. At 8pm there was no shadow. Try not to move the shadow clock once you start recording the shadows.

 
 
 
Have fun !!!!!
 
 
 
 
 
 

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