If you haven’t, read my post on making a clock at home. It was very useful for practice. I looked for some 3-part cards to help teach my children but couldn’t find any. So, I made my own! Here’s how we used them to give you some ideas.
I started with Ben. I laid out all of the labeled “times to the hour” cards. As I set each down, I told him the time it said and had him repeat it. Once they were all laid out, I handed him the stack of just clocks (no times underneath). I used one to show him how I compared two cards to see if they were the same. “The card in my hand has the hour hand on the five, this one has the hour hand on the seven so they do not match. Oh, this one has the hour hand on the five. They match! Five o’clock.” After matching up the clocks, Ben matched the times. I tried very hard not to help him match. I did remind him to say the time as he was matching. I also randomly asked how he knew what time it was, helping him articulate reasoning.
“How do you know that it’s 5 o’clock?”
“Umm, I don’t know.”
“What is the hour hand pointing to?”
“Oh, the five!”
“What is the minute hand pointing to?”
“So, it’s five o’clock because the minute hand is on the twelve and the hour hand is on the five.”
We were just starting working with time, so it wasn’t very important that he knew the answer by himself. By the end of the week, he was able to answer “How do you know what time it is” without help.
Grace knows the times to the hour, but I wasn’t sure about times to the half hour. Her job was to do the same activity Ben did but with the half hour cards. She needed much less help. She just laid them out and matched them up.
Grace did the matching effortlessly so I decided to try and challenge her. I took away all of the cards except the unlabeled clocks. I handed her a pointer (we used a hanger, because it was on the floor). I called out a time and she pointed at the answer. We switched roles. I sometimes picked the wrong answer just to make sure she really knew the times. She enjoyed this activity, but it was not a challenge, she knew them all.
I somehow didn’t get any pictures of the next two activities. I did take notes though!
Activity 1: We used the cards with labels and ordered them starting at 1:00. We included both the time to the hours and half hours. I started the activity and let my kids take over. Once it got going, Grace started doing everything. I stopped her and handed out cards so that Ben could have a chance to sort some of them as well. I gave more cards to Grace than Ben and Ben got more of the time to the hours than half hours. When they were done putting them in order, we went through and said each time twice; once while looking at the clock and the other while reading the digital label. This activity was so fast that I decided to do the next activity on the same day, even though I had scheduled them to be on different days.
Activity 2: Using the cards without labels, I handed each child a stack. I put the large labels “Time to the hour” and “Time to the half hour” in front of them. Their job was to sort the cards in their hands under the appropriate label. I didn’t say anything while they were sorting. They got several in the wrong places. When they were done I said, “There are supposed to be 12 cards in each pile. Are there 12 cards in each pile?” After counting, they realized that they must have made mistakes somewhere. I took the 3:00 card. “What do you notice about this card?” Blank stares. “Where is the hour hand?” “On the 3!” “Where is the minute hand?” “On the 12!” “Let’s look at the 5:00 card. What do you notice?” After discussing a few more clocks I asked, “How do you know if it is a time to the hour?” I wrote an abbreviation of what they told me on the large “Time to the Hour” sorting label. They came up with: The minute hand is on the 12 and the hour hand tells you the hour. I followed the same procedure for the half hour times. On the large “Time to the Half Hour” sorting label I wrote: Minute hand points to the six, hour hand is past the time. Then I helped them go through their sorted piles finding the ones that didn’t belong. For each time I would point to our list we made, “Does this one fit?” 12:30 and 6:00 were the hardest.
I set up the 24 clock cards in a circle in the room. I put them in order in the circle to make them easier for the children to find. I put the time labels in two containers. One container was for Ben and held the “time to the hour” labels. The other was for Grace and held the “time to the half hour” labels. Each child would pull out a label, read it, then find the time that matched the label. Ben had a hard time with this until 6 or so cards were removed, then it was much easier for him.
When we were setting up Day 3’s activity, Grace got really excited while I was telling her what we were going to be doing. She interrupted my instructions by saying, “Are we going to use our bodies to tell the time!?” Well, I hadn’t thought of that. We decided to do Mommy’s idea on Day 3 and her’s on Day 4. We used blocks that had the numbers 1-12. Grace helped set them up around the room like a clock. Using the labels, she drew a time. Grace’s job is to use her body to make that time. She decides how she wants to do it. She decided to use her hands as the hour hand and her legs as the minute hand.
I had each of them match up the clocks with the labels, without the aid of the already labeled clock, to make sure they knew each time. It was pretty obvious that they understood, as they picked up a card they would say the time out loud. I will continue to quiz them every once in a while and do the other suggested activities in my other time post. I will also leave the cards out so that they can match them up again if they want. Would you like my clock printable? You can have it. I’m a sharing kind of person! Go to my Teachers Pay Teachers Store and download it for free! Or use this link
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