Tips for teaching how to tell time

Learning to tell time is an important skill that will prove really useful in children’s lives. As adults we consult the time several times a day and it helps us to organize our activities and manage our time. Here are some tips to start the adventure of learning to tell time with children.

1. First reinforce basic concepts: before starting with more complex questions, you should make sure that your students are familiar with the numbers 1 to 60. This way you can explain how the day, hour and minutes are divided and they will better understand the 15-minute portions that indicate the “and a quarter” and the “quarter to a quarter”.
2. Day, hour, minute, second: starts with: what is a day, and how many hours it has, continues dividing from there, what is an hour, how many minutes it has, what is a minute, how many seconds it has, and how many seconds it has. It continues with the concept of in point, it is the simplest, and continues with and a half to finish with “and a quarter” and “minus a quarter”.
3. Analog first: we recommend you to start with analog clocks: mainly because it will help them to see the portions of time better and also because, although we tend to think that everything is already digital around us, we see analog clocks in many public places and homes.
4. Fun: as with everything else, if children perceive this task as boring and uninspiring, it will be twice as difficult to get them to internalize the basic concepts. Try to approach the learning of time in a playful way, with games and activities that keep the attention of the little ones. There are plenty of resources, including videos to help you through the process.
5. Patience: this learning is a process and requires patience. Children will not be able to understand it overnight, so we advise you to split the activity.

As I’m sure you know, at Smile and Learn we have many activities and videos to learn concepts like this. Send us an email to info@smileandlearn.com indicating the name and type of your center, your email, your name and your phone number and we will send you a free trial.