When and how to teach a child to watch?

For the current generation of 30-40-year-olds, the first Holy Communion was the occasion to get their first watch. Today, no one buys watches for a gift on this occasion, unless we are talking about smartwatches. The child receives a classic pointer watch from his parents or another close person.

However, there are still doubts as tohow to teach a child a clock and when is the right time to start learning to read the hours correctly?

When is it time to start exercising on a kids watch?

Science reading time on the watch is planned for the first year of primary school, but perhaps our child will be ready earlier for exercises on the watch? First things first: ato teach a child to watch it must know the numbers well in order to be able to perform simple arithmetic operations, be able to count every "5". If these conditions are met, it remains for us to explain to the toddler what this abstract time is and why we need to control it and how to function so as not to be late?

Nowadays, you also have to often show your child what a classic is pointer clock. For adults, these issues seem obvious, but for children they are not at all. 

In order to make him realize why time is important, we should get a big one pointer clock. Ideally, we'd make a clock that we'll be on teach and prepare exercises together with our comfort. To should not be difficult, and by the way, it can be a great opportunity to have fun in itself.

We're making a clock to learning hours

This is supposed to be Model hand clock, which will show the little one, what activities we do at different times of the day. We will use a technical block, markers, a bottle stopper, a pin. On our paper dial, let's draw big, clear hours.

Aby teach a child to clock at each hour, we can draw an activity that we then perform, e.g. at At 16.00:7.00 p.m. we draw cutlery or something to eat to illustrate the time of lunch, at XNUMX:XNUMX a.m. - an alarm clock as a wake-up symbol, etc. We will help the child start to perceive time as something ordering the activities performed. Learning hours it will seem more important and relevant to him.

Hours and minutes: learning on the watch

Once this is mastered, let's explain - slowly and calmly - what is the role of a small and a large tip. At our show the dial clock they should clearly differ - so that our child would not be able to confuse them. How to teach a child to watch?

Let's start with the small minute hand and focus on it a little longer, making your child aware of its dual role in counting both the hour and the minutes.

Once your little one understands this, we can move on to learning hours on the clock. Full hours shouldn't be a problem for him. When our consolation has mastered it, it's time to show half the hour. to good teach a child for reading minutes, it is worth focusing first on the right side of the dial, i.e. specifying the time between a full hour and half past two.

This is the easier part to learn, it just requires a "5" countdown.  Reading minutes on the left side of the shield (between half an hour and the next full hour), when we say, for example, "ten to five", it is more difficult for children. Sometimes toddlers avoid such conversions and say, for example, "forty past nine", which sounds a bit funny. However, as long as the time is specified correctly, we can start learning on the watch turn a blind eye to it.