Teaching Telling Time

We are still loving the Math their Way games for school- but since most of our math is games, with a few assignments that our math teacher Pam throws in (thanks SO much for teaching math!) We haven't really come across the "telling time" lessons in the math book. ;) But that's okay- because it's something that is simple to teach through life.

Doodle has been learning how to tell time. For a while now- I've occasionally put these telling time cards and teaching clocks in his workboxes. He has been enjoying the hands-on time telling. Some ways we've used them- 1- I tell him a time, and he makes his clock say that time. 2- I make my clock say a time and he tells me what time it says. 3- we pick a card from the deck and race to make our clocks show the same time as the clock on the card. 4- He picks a card, and reads the written time on the card, then makes his clock say the same time, and checks himself with the answer on the back. First we started with just telling time to the hour. Then added the half hour. Then when Doodle had counting by 5's figured out- we did down to the 5 minute.

I told Ben how good he was getting at telling time- so Ben came home from the store with this watch for Doodle. We simply ask him every few mintues "What time is it?" Or he'll tell us every few minutes what time it is.

This watch is perfect- as it has the minutes around the edge, so he doesn't have to stop and count by 5's every time. He knows how to count by 5's, but this is helping him to quickly know that if it's on the 3, it's :15, or on the 8 it's :40. He still occasionally gets mixed up on the hour- but he's having fun with the new watch. I'm sure the newness of the watch will grow old, but hopefully not before he has telling time totally figured out.