Thursday, September 8, 2011

Thinking Thursdays: Telling the time


Junior J has started trying to tell the time from the clock in the living room.  He would peer at it, and proclaim that it is 5/6/7 o'clock!  (He gets mixed up between the two hands, and just randomly picks one and shouts out the number that the hand is pointing to... haha)

Oddly enough, we've also been reading "The Grouchy Ladybug" to him recently (perhaps that is where he started getting interested in looking at the clock...).  In the book, this ladybug goes around picking fights with various animals at different times (I just wish we didn't have to repeat "Hey, want to fight?" 10 over times!):

I like how the book shows the time, both in text, as well as in the form of little clocks at the top of the page.
Also, we've been looking at the position of the sun at the different times of the day. :)

So when we read this book, we settle down with a little clock (from a maths manipulatives set I bought sometime ago from My Playschool), and as we encounter each mention of a time, Junior J gets to turn the clock.  Initially I wanted to use another clock (the Melissa and Doug version, which allowed for both hands to be moved independently), but the clock was a shape-sorter as well and I didn't want the boy to be distracted.

Right now, the boy manages to stay on task for the first half of the book, and is getting the hang of identifying the 2 different clock hands.  However, when he loses interest, we just finish reading the book and leave it as that, so we've not gotten down to identifying different times when the minute hand isn't pointing at 12!

Oh, and here are some other related activities you could try:
:: Grouchy Ladybug lapbook
:: Other ideas (from the Eric Carle website)

How do you teach your child to tell the time?

2 comments:

  1. I remember I didn't learn how to read an analogue clock until I was about 8 or 9. It wasn't that my parents didn't try to teach me, I just didn't get the hang of it at that time =P
    I think once I realised it was useful and I could kinda read it myself, I was more interested in the clock.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Evergreen: I guess its really based on interest! ;)

    ReplyDelete

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