Tuesday: Tell Time Games

Tuesday is a great day for Time!  And these Tell Time games are sure to make your Tuesday a little more fun for your little ones.

We try to focus on one area of “extra” math each school day – in addition to our regular math worksheets/homework.  Mondays are more/less statements, Tuesdays we practice with clocks, Wednesdays we count backwards as we drive places, Thursdays we play with money and Fridays are for fun (aka Lego math or some building activity).

Kids Activities Blog is excited to share with you these fun activities to do today to help you child understand the concept of time.

Tuesday

Here are 10 of the ideas we’ve found to help us with our Tuesday learning!

Make a playdough globe.  As you find hours on your “clock”, put a stick into your globe about the area that you think it would be that time.  Discuss how time is different in different places.  Thanks to A Little Learning for inspiring this earth activity – they used things they are thankful for on their “sticks”.

Count down to a big event, like New Years Eve.  Hoosier Homemade made a bag of treats that her kids could open up, one on each hour as they counted down to midnight.  This would be a great “telling time” activity for a long road-trip too!

Wear a watch.  The act of wearing a watch has helped give my children a concept of time pretty quickly.  I love the “Time Teaching” watches.  These have the hours and the minuets on the face to help your child learn to differentiate between the hours and minuets.

Get Physical.  Make a giant clock outside on your driveway like the kids over at Who Would Have Thought It.  They used their bodies to make the time.  Looks like a blast!!

Tell Time Games

Play with Paper Plate “Clocks”.  I first saw a version of the clock pictured above at Mrs. Nielsen’s 2nd grade.  She cut flaps into her paper plate that she could lift the hour and show her kids the minuets.  Brilliant.  We had to make our own paper clock (pictured above).  The kids love it.

Use worksheets.  Here is a terrific telling time worksheet that we have used to help our kids diagram “time”.  Put it in a page protector and use with dry erase markers to ask questions like: “What time did you eat breakfast this morning?”  “Erase that and tell me what time is one hour earlier than breakfast.”

Skip Count 5s.  The part that is the hardest for my kiddos is learning the hour “number” with the minuets – ex: 8 = 40 minuets.  Skip counting has really helped them figure it out!  SchoolHouse Rock has a fun song where they skip count as fast as they can their 5′s.  The kids love counting along.

Make a Time Wall.  We used cardboard boxes to create “clocks” with the common events of our day on the face.   Our daily “events” included: morning snack time, the time they can get up from naps, time that Daddy is home from work, etc.  This helps my toddlers know to “match” the time.  Ex:  “You can’t get up from quiet time until 4pm, when the clock looks like this (pointing to the correct time)”.

Work with Analog.  Help your child realize that time is documented in many formats.  Teach Mama has a great collection of worksheets and lesson plans to help your child see the big picture.

Race each other to the Time.  I remember as a child in classes, I loved the wipe-board activities.  This is a board that you can purchase to have time-telling races with each other. .

What do you do to learn together on a Tuesday?