Learning to tell the time

[Bumblebee2008]

I was just wondering if anyone can recommend a clock that could help my daughter tell the time ? Or should I just stick to a normal clock with hands for her to learn from ? Thanks

For me, time is one of those things that some children get instantly and others just don't understand and often the more able children can be the ones who struggle!
Once children understand o'clock and half past I like teaching time with a clock that doesn't have numbers. Simply because they learn the position of the minute hand at five past/ten past etc. I find one of the hardest things they find is saying 1 minute past when they mean five minutes past because the minute hand is pointing to the one. Try to get them to understand that the numbers around the outside tell us the hours not the minutes.

Try ELC (do they still exist?)

My local Sainsburys is selling a wall clock which has the face split into quarter hours (labelled)which Im using in class

You might be lucky and find large clock in car-boot, jumble sale or charity shop.

Jhon Lewis has a good alarm clock. High St jewellers have helpful watches for about £15. Practice is all.

DS1 has a watch marked like this which he finds helpful.

We have one of the practice clocks and also a wall clock marked with the quarter to, quarter past and half past etc. I think that came from sainsburys a few years ago.
We do make her tell us the time regularly and also tell her when we need to leave for various activities and get her to tell us how long we've got.

The revised national curriculum for maths requires telling the time in Roman Numerals! Just to advise you - for later on!

Paper plate, cardboard hands, numbers written in (use the dents in the rim as a guide), drawing pin to attach to the wall. Yours for 2p and 5 minutes work.

Milly, what year do they require them to tell the time with Roman Numerals? In all honesty I'm not sure what year they need to tell the time anyway!

But I agree with a pp OP, we have a clock on our lounge wall with no numbers, just lines and DD managed to pick it up fairly quickly. We started it at Easter when they started doing hours and half past (year 1). DD has just gone into Yr2 and can tell the time using both a normal clock (saying 5 to 11 instead of 10.55 etc) and also a 24 hour clock.

So definitely recommend a clock with no numbers. It's helped with her 5 times table aswell! She can now do quick recall of the 5 times table because she visualises the clock and knows that 11 is 55, 7 is 35 etc.

Year 1 tell the time hours, half past. Quarter past and quarter to the hour. Year 2 tell time to nearest five minutes. Year 3 tell time to nearest minute, 24 hour clock and using Roman numerals.

Thank you Mrz that is really good to know. Sorry to hijack but while you're on Mrz, we have DD's first Year 2 parents evening soon. Is it reasonable to ask how much catch up they might be having to do this year to ensure that they are on track for the end of KS1 against the new curriculum? I know that the teachers will have this well in hand but I like to support from home as much as I can...

We had a fridge magnet clock that you could move the hands round on. Pippa pig if I remember picked up at a local pound store or similar. DD really got it when we turned ourselves into the hands and lay down on the lawn and had various garden objects as points on the clock. Huge giggles at half past the watering can. Just made it a bit more fun and moving around physically as human clock hands helped embed the idea.

I taught my kids when they were very little. I had them say things like: "It's 1 five-minutes after 3, it's 2 five-minuteses after 3, etc" not very grammatical, maybe, but they really got the idea that the numbers represented groups of five minutes each. After they got good at that, I would ask: "How many minutes is 4 five-minuteses?" They knew the five times table so that was easy.

It sounds a little weird, but it worked well for us.