Learning Clocks

You’ll need a brad to attach the hands to the clock.

Be sure to point out that the blue hand points to the blue hours and the black hand points to the black minute ticks. The most important thing to make sure your child understands, though, is that each hour takes up a full twelfth of the clock. Anytime the short hand is within that “room” where that hour lives, it’s that hour.

The biggest difficulty with learning to tell time is that kids learn time to the hour first, and are taught that the hour is whichever number the short hand points to. But when you move on to half hours and quarter hours, the short hand is between hours. And kids mistakenly think that the correct hour is whichever number the short hand is closest to, which is NOT the case. 

That’s why you need to teach your child about the rooms (the colored segments) in which each number lives. That entire room belongs to the number, and any time the short hand is within that room, it is that hour. You’ll find more practice for this concept with the ‘Best Way to Teach Your Child to Tell Time’ games in my shop.

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