Learning how to tell the TIME

My son and I had the most wonderful time learning how to read clocks and telling the time. I was able to purchase this clock board at ELC with 50% discount last Christmas and I just waited for the holidays to be over so I could teach the little one how to use it.  Then I printed out a matching game from this site, First-School Preschool Activities and Crafts, to go along with our lesson.  You can also check this Write & Wipe Demonstration Clock from Amazon US as an alternative learning clock.

First thing, I talked about the clock and how it’s long and short hands works, and telling him that it is the hands that tell us the time.  Then I demonstrated how we read the HOUR through the hand’s position.  He was listening intently which really surprised me.  Then, I showed him how to ‘read’ the clock using it’s hands.  So I demonstrated this by configuring the hands and telling him what time it is set on.  Halfway through, he figured it out so instead of me, telling what time it is... I would just set the hands and would ask him “What time does the clock say?”

I guess it’s not that complicated because he got everything right.  In fact, he insisted that he can do it by himself.  So here he is, doing the manipulation of the hands and would ask me what time does it say!  He’s like that these days... likes to play my role :)

These clock cut-outs were also taken from the penguin activity which I downloaded. Here, I set up the clock and he would look for the match using the printables.

For another matching game, I made him match the clocks to the appropriate time indicated in the penguin card. He only did a few cards though... might be tired already from all the drills we did previously.

So currently, we’re only learned the concept of the “time on the hour”. I will introduce the minutes and seconds as he progress.  As a followup activity on learning about clocks you can check this other post, The Clock.

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