A Guide to Telling Time

It is beneficial for children to begin learning to tell time between ages 5 and 8. Start by teaching your child how to wear the watch, placing it right side up on his/her wrist. Children between the age of 5 and 8 should start learning how to tell time. The learning process should start with the training to wear the watch. You should tie the watch in a way as if the watch is not too tight or too loose.

Specific watches

There are different ways to learn how to tell time. There are specific watches, which bears large numbers to represent the hour and small numbers to represent the minute. These types of watches are helpful in providing the training. In fact, the hands of the watches are also distinguished properly to make it easy to learn. The hour hand is thick, minute hand is thinner and the second hand is thinnest and in a different color in most cases.

Significance of each hand

A child must understand the significance of each of the hand. You need to start learning with the second hand. You can learn by counting 60s as the second hand makes one complete circle. In order to make the concept about seconds more clear, it is best to discuss about those activities that takes few seconds. The minute hand comes next and it should be clear that every time the second hand makes a full circle, the minute hand also moves a small dot to complete one minute. It is the same way as you have the idea about seconds. In case of minutes, you need to discuss about activities that takes few minutes. The third hand or the hour hand also needs enough emphasis. The relation between the minute hand and the hour hand is that every time the minute hand makes a full circle, the hour hands moves a dot. You can discuss about TV program or movies to get a clear idea about hour. The last thing about hour, minute and second hand you need to learn are that a second hands makes 1440 full circle a day, a minute hand makes 24 full circles a day and a hour hand makes 2 circles a day.

How to tell time

Once the child knows the significance of each hand, then try to teach how to tell the time by explaining the hour first and then the minutes. You can identify the hour by observing the large number, which the hour hand had just passed. Then the minutes can be identified by counting the small numbers.

More practice, more efficient

There should be enough practice to tell time more efficiently as counting the individual dots or numbers can be itself time consuming. Therefore, the kid should learn to count like five, ten, fifteen, twenty, etc. The best way to encourage the practice is to keep a track on various activities and tell time according to that. In fact, drawing the position of hands of a clock showing different time can also be helpful.