Teaching Kids to Tell Time

Telling time is a concept children often struggle with learning. It’s an important yet challenging skill for kids to master because it involves a variety of skills and concepts. Learning to tell time involves number recognition, counting by ones and fives, using fractions (half past, quarter after, etc.), and understanding the big and little hands and their functions on the clock. All of these concepts alone may be intimidating enough to a young child. Throw them all in together and it’s brain overload!

Here’s a list of great telling time resources that offer fun, creative ways to help children better grasp the time concepts.

• Education World - Education World offers excellent hands-on lessons and printable worksheets and games (including a fun BINGO game) to help kids practice telling time. Check out It’s About Time: Teaching Students to Tell Time.

• Time-for-Time – Time-for-time has a printable clock face complete with attachable big and little hands to offer kids a hands-on learning experience. Also available at this site, are these fun, interactive telling time games.

• About.com: Mathematics – About.com offers a comprehensive list of PDF worksheets to download and use to help children practice telling time (on the hour, half hour, quarter hour, and random times).

• Apples4theteacher.com – Apples4theteacher.com provides two online interactive time telling games for kids to play (located at the bottom of the page).

These are only a few of the online resources available to teachers, parents and children for teaching and learning to tell time. Remember, the key is to help the child learn while having fun. Learning to tell time doesn’t have to boring or stressful.

Time flies (and is learned) when you’re having fun!