Australian Competitions Club

http://justuskids.com.au/blog/2011/05/23/tick-tock-learning-to-tell-the-time/

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Would you like to win a set of this “Learning Time” pack? Simply leave a comment at the bottom of this post stating the thing you would love to learn to teach your child – only one entry per person. This giveaway closes on Sunday 5th June 2011, 6pm AEST. The winner will be picked at random.

Knowing how to tell the time is one of the important aspects of day-to-day life. It helps us plan our day, tells us how much time we’ve got left before we proceed on to the next activity, and even how much rest and sleep we’ve had. How then can we teach our kids, something that we take for granted? Like reading and writing, telling the time might come easily to some kids but harder for others, either way, we have to know not to push when it comes to learning. So how can we impart this useful and great knowledge to our children?

Some steps include:

Showing your child the difference between the long hand (minute) and the short hand (hour).
Start by telling them about the o’clock – that each time the long hand is on the 12 it’s “something o’clock”.
Sharing how long it takes to do something or get somewhere, and then showing it to them on your watch or on the clock.
Using everyday activities, like highlighting the time to leave the house for school.
These are just some basic steps. Understanding time needs a lot of reinforcements, and having some other fun tools can also help. I’ve recently trialled the “Learning Time” pack from Kids Learning is Fun. Started by a mum of 3 kids, who used to be a teacher, this site also has some other amazing tools, to help your child through their school years.

The “Learning Time” (rrp$33.00) pack includes:

A clock face with movable hour and minute hands

Master 5 learning the time with the clock face
 

Time Matching Cards – there’s cards with analogue time, digital time, clock faces, words describing the different times

Matching Time Cards
 

Charts explaining the different concepts of time

Learning Charts
My kids were surprisingly pretty involved in “playing” with this pack. I started off by placing the clock face cards and getting Miss 9 to place the sentences describing the time matching the face. The good thing about this is that it states the different ways one can say the time. For instance, if the clock face had the long hand on the 4 and the short hand on the 5, there would be 2 ways of saying this; 20 minutes past 5 or 40 minutes to 6. Miss 9 actually had to read and figure out that out herself, whist I got Miss 7 to place the digital time that matches the face. This was also an opportunity for me to teach her the 5 multiplication table. With Master 5, I basically went through the o’clock and 1/2 past on the clock face with the movable hands.

The matching cards can also be used to play “Snap” or even the “Memory Game” to further enhance their learning scope. The charts included were helpful as in they explain what o’clock, 1/2 past, 1/4 past and 1/4 to meant. There’s also a chart that explains the different parts of a clock – seconds, minutes, hour.

Another important factor about this pack is that the items are all laminated, making it easy for us to keep it clean.

Besides the products available, the site also has a free e-course for parents to learn how to help their children learn the fundamentals of learning. There are also webinars, with the current one being the “Maths” series, a 3 part series starting on the 24th May 2011.
Learning Time Pack rrp$33