How to Teach Your Child to Tell Time

Today’s guest post shares great tips for you on how to teach clock for kindergarten age kids if your child struggling to tell the time. Helping your child to learn how to tell time is an important life skill.

Understanding the concept of time helps people be accountable for days and productivity, so children should learn it as early as possible. However, it is one of the most challenging concepts to teach kids because they have to visualize the idea. Depending on the child’s age, some challenges and wins make teaching a kid to tell time effectively. Here are a few tips to guide you through the process of teaching your child to tell time.

Here’s how your child will learn how to tell time

Begin with the basic ideas

A child can recognize when it is morning, evening, and night. The child can also relate time with particular activities.

Utilize the knowledge the kids have gathered in nature before introducing the theoretical understanding of time. For instance, you can relate morning with waking up and the meals that involve coffee, tea, bread, and much lighter foods. Relate midday to lunch break, while the evening is related to people returning home. Finally, the night comes with sleep. Such general or basic ideas of time provide the perfect foundation when teaching kids about time.

Use the clock

Introduce children to the clock and the particular positions of the arms at each moment. For example, let your kid take note of the position of the shorter arm in the morning when he wakes up. He can then notice the changes during the next activity, like a lunch hour or tea break. The differences begin to build a narrative that time moves, just like the arms on the clock.

Request your child to draw the face of the clock at different moments. Let the children compare the drawings at various hours or over the days of the week. They begin to identify patterns that will cement the idea of time.

Here’s a great visual learning piece you can use in your classroom.

 

Use toys

Buy toys resembling watches and clocks. Hang them on the wall or let the kids use them on their arms. Such toys will allow your child to spend more play time exploring and thinking about the concept of time.

Your child can imitate different hours of the day and change activities based on the hour chosen. You can even use toys to prepare mock activities that are guided by the time selected.

Start counting

Use a real clock to count seconds, minutes, hours, and days. For example, a stopwatch will help you count down the time it takes to complete a task. Compare the speed of completing different tasks and the time of day it will be by the time you complete a task.

For instance, you can track the position of the shorter arm of a clock in the morning as the child or parent leaves for work and evening when everyone returns. Time becomes a practical concept for the child.

Training a child to tell time requires a strategic approach that moves from the known to the unknown. Toys are a perfect starting point. Once the child learns to count time, many other ideas about time become easier to understand.

 

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