Being able to tell time is a basic but vital skill that every person should have. In fact, according to experts, it is crucial for parents to teach their children how to read time at a very young age. Knowing the exact time and how time passes can be very helpful to children in lots of ways.
At an early age, parents need to start teaching their children how to tell time. Telling time has a variety of skills that are put into practice. Being able to tell time will help your child manage it and do more productive activities. It will help him create outputs that are high quality and thus helping him become more competitive academics wise.
But teaching your child to read time is not such an easy task. It is gruelling, exasperating and often stressful. Nevertheless, there are some sure-fire ways you can teach your child to tell time without getting all stressed out.
Here are some of them:
Reading Numbers
When teaching a child how to tell time, the first thing you need to do is to teach him how to read numbers. Make sure your child is able to count from 1 to 60. Here at Yoyoboko, we also prepared an article to help you teach your child to read numbers and you can find it here.
Remember not to start teaching your child how to tell time before he learns how to read numbers. If you do this, your child may end up becoming frustrated and discouraged.
Learning the 5 Times Table
After your child learns how to read numbers, the next step you should take is to teach your child the five times table. Again this is a step that you should take in order to make your child learn to tell time quickly and more accurately.
To help your child to quickly learn the 5 times table, it is advisable that you play a little counting game with your child while teaching him. Use a watch to see how long it takes to count up to 20. Then start increasing the numbers gradually until you reach 60. Then let them ask you 2 x 10. Give the answer to give them an insight as to why there’s a need to learn tables.
To help you further about this step, we have also upload an article specifically meant for teaching children how to read the 5 times table. To read the said article, please feel free to click here.
Introducing a Clock
Once your child is adept with numbers and the 5 times table, get him a large analog clock. Start off with a daily planning clock. You can either make an analog clock or buy one if you have no time to create a clock. If you happen to plan on buying an analog clock, make sure that there’s no glass that will prevent you from maneuvering the hands. It’s best to buy a toy clock, responsibility clock or time chart like our Yoyoboko Bumble Bee Time Chart.
Explain what the short hand is for. Move the short hand to different positions on the clock, while keeping the minute hand at 12. Explain what hour it is every time you maneuver the clock to each hour. After demonstrating this to your child, allow him to do the same as well.
Next, explain what the minute hand is for. Keep the hour hand steady and start moving the minute hand. Start by covering 5 minute marks and make sure your child understands in clearly before you progress to the next steps. Once your child becomes confident that he’s mastered the minute had, encourage him to demonstrate.
As for the next step, demonstrate how they can read the hour and minute together. When doing this, start with something simple like 2:30, 12:10, 11:05 or 4:05 and, once your child gets this concept, move on to more complex times like 9:42, 10:29 and 11:17.
The next and final step is quizzing. First off, allow your child to quiz you. This will give him a sense of control and the confidence, while getting enough about your teachings. After which, ask your child about the clock.
Make sure he got everything you taught him. And if in case he missed something or there’s something that he doesn’t understand, gladly go through your lesson as well.
Making This Lesson More Fun
Get a large piece of paper or a paper and then crayons. Then supervise your child while he’s creating a clock. Then use the crayons to demonstrate how the hour hand and the minute hand work, just like it says in the previous part of this article.
Teaching your child how to tell time can definitely be fun. You can even use it as a bonding moment between you and your child. Just remember that your child may not get it the first time you teach it to him, so gather all your patience before starting this activity.
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