Telling time in early years

Ellen Says: Telling time is a very important concept in the early childhood years. Knowing about the exact time and elapsed time helps children in a variety of ways, not just when they are young but also when they get older.

It is important for adults to also concentrate on this skill in preschoolers. More than reading, writing, counting and knowing how to coordinate body muscles, telling time has a lot of skills that are put into practice once the young one starts learning about clocks, hours, minutes and seconds.

My little boy Rallione keep his eyes wide open in our wall clock everytime I ask about the the time. He learn to match what was taught to him when they are introduced to the idea that the long hand means minutes, the short hand means hours and the running hand means seconds. Being that a specific position means a particular time of day or night, Rallione learn to match numbers and hours to give the time of day.

Telling the time and elapsed time teaching gives our children an abstract idea of how much time has passed them by. This is best exampled before play, when they are aware of the fact that they started at a particular time and then once they finish they have ended their play at yet another particular time. With this, they can backtrack telling time and elapsed time to know how many minutes they have spent playing.