About to rip my hair out.

[Xuzi]

My DD is sitting on her bed with no toys, and I'm steaming, and it's all over clocks.

 

We've been doing Math Mammoth 2a, and we're dealing with the chapter on clocks. After explaining. and explaining. and explaining. how to find hours and minutes, she STILL cannot do it without coaching. If the hour hand is on the 4 and the minute hand is on the 7, she'll say the time is "47" or "4, 7". If I tell her "Find the hour first", she can usually find it. If I say "Now find the minutes" she'll just tell me whatever number the minute hand is pointing to until I say "How do you count minutes?" THEN she can remember that you count by fives. Every.single. problem on the page requires starting from scratch with instruction. And she doesn't even seem to care! She sees me getting frustrated, and she just shrugs her shoulders saying "I dunno" if I asked her what I just got done telling her.

 

I think I probably just answered my own question that we should probably skip clocks for now, but could this also be a sign of a bigger problem? Her Kindy teacher often said she lacked focus, and she lacked focus during our homeschool year last year as well. I had hoped that with maturity the focus would appear, but she is SO easily distracted. Even when I'm in the middle of a sentence she'll look like she's paying attention to me, but then I'll see her eyes slowly slide to the side and I know she's now paying attention to what's out the window instead of at me.

 

She was evaluated several times as a toddler and Kindy student for speach and other issues (even went to our local early intervention pre-school for a couple of years), but attention issues was never raised as being any great concern. Could they have missed something?

[FO4UR]

Is this the 6yo?

 

Yes, I'd skip clocks for now...atleast in MM.

 

I teach time through irl methods. Child tells mom when it's time for snack, a game, lunch, etc... Give a whole hour to watch for first, and when that is steady, ask her to tell you when it's 2:30, 3:30 or 4:30...and from there it's been pretty easy to teach telling time naturally.

 

It's certainly not worth tears at 6yo. It's not even needed to progress in math.

[scrapbookbuzz]

Deep breath, Mom! :chillpill:

 

She is ONLY 6. Please remember that. Just because she's not looking right at you doesn't necessarily mean she's not paying attention to you. My dd struggles with Asperger's Syndrome and actually retains better when she is not looking at me. You may also want to consider having your daughter sit on an exercise ball or play with something in one hand while going over lessons. Sounds weird, I know, but it helps us highly distractible folk! ;)

 

By the way, I liked to look out the windows, too, when I was in school, or at what the other kids were doing, etc. Anywhere but where I was supposed to be paying attention. From what I've learned of myself and others, as an adult, is that that "distractability" is usually the sign of a highly intelligent person. We think fast. It's the reigning-in of that lightning fast thought process that is the challenge. But if we can do that, we can do amazing things!

 

Take a break from learning time for now and have FUN.

[TKDmom]

:grouphug: Doing math with my oldest dd invariably makes me want to pull my hair out.

 

I remember reading someone else's comment once that the MM clocks sections are very difficult. They said that looking back, they wished they had just skipped all the clock sections, then come back in 3rd grade to study clocks with the Blue series unit.

[Xuzi]

Ya, I just got off the phone with my DH, and he said he didn't learn clocks until he was in 3rd grade either, but I *vividly* remember watching my 1st grade teacher show us time on her big yellow Judy Clock. :lol:

 

We'll skip clocks. :D

 

(oh, and I shall now go update my siggy, as my 6 year old is actually 7 :p )

[KS_]

Is this the 6yo?

 

Yes, I'd skip clocks for now...atleast in MM.

 

I teach time through irl methods. Child tells mom when it's time for snack, a game, lunch, etc... Give a whole hour to watch for first, and when that is steady, ask her to tell you when it's 2:30, 3:30 or 4:30...and from there it's been pretty easy to teach telling time naturally.

 

It's certainly not worth tears at 6yo. It's not even needed to progress in math.

 

I wouldn't worry too much about it at this point. One thing I did for my kids was to buy them each a real clock with hands for their rooms so they could see the different times during the day (bedtime is at this time - big hand here, little hand here, etc.) They now both have digital clocks, too, and still my 5th grader seems confused sometimes with the old-style clock :glare: But in reality, almost every clock/watch she sees is digital and there's not a lot of practice with a clock or watch with hands.

[AEC]

if she's not paying attention, it's time to back off and come at it again another day...IMO.

 

re: general paying attention...my DD7 is very bright, and very sweet...and easily distracted as well.

 

Think.....the dogs in 'Up'...we're talking about something and <SQUIRL> she's no longer intersted. Something shiny, or noisy, or gee...maybe even just her toes are suddenly 100% of the world she's paying attention to. It can be very frustrating. :glare:

 

She does this with everyone, and in fact even to herself when playing.

 

Part of it is, I think, being 7...though DS never did this, so <shrug>.

[boscopup]

There was a big thread a while back about the clocks chapter in MM2. A LOT of kids had trouble with it. Definitely skip it if it's that much of a struggle. MM3 goes over clocks again. She won't graduate without knowing how to read an analog clock. :D

 

ETA: Found the thread!

[PenKase]

Learning analog time is quite challenging for little ones. When we did the clock chapter, we reviewed for many weeks after in real life. Even now, when I ask dd7 (8 in December) the time, I instruct her to use the analog. Sometimes she still has to really think hard to tell it right.

[Calm37]

My DD is sitting on her bed with no toys, and I'm steaming, and it's all over clocks.

 

She was evaluated several times as a toddler and Kindy student for speach and other issues (even went to our local early intervention pre-school for a couple of years), but attention issues was never raised as being any great concern. Could they have missed something?

 

I tried teaching my oldest using the math route and....what a disaster! She never did learn analog clocks until she was 10 or 11. Too traumatic, ha, ha.

 

I used DK's My First Book of Time to teach the other three. Very smooth! I guess just taking it out of math and using a fun book was all that was needed.

 

Blessings,

[NanceXToo]

Aw. That's young to be able to tell time (my daughter still needed to work on it through like age 8) and young to appear to be giving undivided attention, too.

 

Let her off the bed. Give her back her toys. Give her a hug and admit you lost patience and that you now know she's just not ready for this activity and that that's ok.

 

Then just let it go for now.

[TKDmom]

if she's not paying attention, it's time to back off and come at it again another day...IMO.

 

re: general paying attention...my DD7 is very bright, and very sweet...and easily distracted as well.

 

Think.....the dogs in 'Up'...we're talking about something and <SQUIRL> she's no longer intersted. Something shiny, or noisy, or gee...maybe even just her toes are suddenly 100% of the world she's paying attention to. It can be very frustrating. :glare:

 

She does this with everyone, and in fact even to herself when playing.

 

Part of it is, I think, being 7...though DS never did this, so <shrug>.

 

I think it's part of being 10, too... :glare:

 

My dh assures me that he was every bit as absent minded as my dd is. This in nearly impossible for me to picture--I don't think I've ever met anyone as focused and driven as my dh is. Maybe they need to get all their distractedness/daydreaming out of the way before they reach adulthood??

[Paige]

My girls had a hard time with the clocks in MM. At first they liked it but then they got lost. They have been doing a Kumon book instead- My First Book of Telling Time, or something like that. They love it! It is very incremental and easy and they love easy things that make them feel smart. I would have no problem skipping clocks at this age but we just happened to already have this book when they started having problems. I have them do a page on top of their MM work every day and it is so easy that it only takes them about 5min extra. They can do it almost completely independently.

[Firestar Academy]

oh, my, skip clocks!! ky kids couldn't do it FOREVER... to me, it wasn't a building block. Like, you need to now addition to move on to multiplication. but telling time, eh, don't NEED to know to move on to another topic.

 

revisit it later.

 

robin

[Pam L in Mid Tenn]

Telling time and counting money are things that come with life experience. When my kids were little, we did the lessons on those things but I did not expect mastery then. Move on to the next lesson.

[....]

We use Singapore and there are clocks even in 3B. So, 6 is young for telling time. My 6 yro can't tell time and I'm not even going to attempt that yet. :D

[abrightmom]

My DD is sitting on her bed with no toys, and I'm steaming, and it's all over clocks.

 

We've been doing Math Mammoth 2a, and we're dealing with the chapter on clocks. After explaining. and explaining. and explaining. how to find hours and minutes, she STILL cannot do it without coaching. If the hour hand is on the 4 and the minute hand is on the 7, she'll say the time is "47" or "4, 7". If I tell her "Find the hour first", she can usually find it. If I say "Now find the minutes" she'll just tell me whatever number the minute hand is pointing to until I say "How do you count minutes?" THEN she can remember that you count by fives. Every.single. problem on the page requires starting from scratch with instruction. And she doesn't even seem to care! She sees me getting frustrated, and she just shrugs her shoulders saying "I dunno" if I asked her what I just got done telling her.

 

I think I probably just answered my own question that we should probably skip clocks for now, but could this also be a sign of a bigger problem? Her Kindy teacher often said she lacked focus, and she lacked focus during our homeschool year last year as well. I had hoped that with maturity the focus would appear, but she is SO easily distracted. Even when I'm in the middle of a sentence she'll look like she's paying attention to me, but then I'll see her eyes slowly slide to the side and I know she's now paying attention to what's out the window instead of at me.

 

She was evaluated several times as a toddler and Kindy student for speach and other issues (even went to our local early intervention pre-school for a couple of years), but attention issues was never raised as being any great concern. Could they have missed something?

We use Math Mammoth. My oldest is VERY BRIGHT and "gets" new math concepts easily. He has ZERO capacity to screen out distraction (has been evaluated and therapy is pending) but this has had nothing to do with understanding clocks! The clocks chapter in Math Mammoth 2nd grade was the ONLY time we had "near tears" and LOTS of frustration in math (throwing pencils, Mom fuming, etc.). It was immensely liberating for my son and for me to set it aside indefinitely although we did this :boxing_smiley: and this :banghead: before I realized we could PAUSE.

 

We went back to it this summer (after completing the remainder of 2nd grade MM) and clocks began "clicking" for him. I also have a more patient, understanding demeanor when we tackle this topic. I know that learning the clock is tough on my guy and no amount of force feeding him is going to help. We'll re-tackle it periodically and stay with it when it begins to click and not overwhelm (we are actually at this point now). Clocks come up again in 3rd grade with a full chapter devoted to the topic. You could also decide to set it aside for a summer study, a holiday break study (unless it would ruin your DC's holiday) or something for a "light Friday" math session. For what it's worth, my 2nd grader was 7 when we tackled clocks in MM2....

 

I do believe that learning the clock is somewhat abstract. There are a LOT of details to keep straight and for a child who grapples with concentration I imagine their little brains tell them to TUNE OUT because they feel overwhelmed. Taking time off from clocks COMPLETELY worked very well here. :001_smile:

[isitnaptime]

We haven't done the lesson you are talking about yet(thanks for the heads up!), but this is what I did last year. I bought a cheap black plastic wall clock from walmart ($3) and wrote the minutes next to the hours with a white erase marker so she could see what the minutes were.

She was only 6 then, but now I will let her write the minutes in herself and just play with the clock however she wants, change the time, etc.

[jjins]

I can tell you now, "Give her TIME." (pun intended)

 

My DD (third grade) just started reading clocks accurately. I kept trying and then backing off because like your DD at 6 should could not grasp the concept. This drove me crazy because 1st born DS was reading them at FOUR!!!!

 

I would keep showing her the hour hand at the top of the hour whenever you can. Let her spend lots of time on JUST the hour. Then add in 1/2 hour. Later 1/4 after and 1/4 til meaning 6:15 not 1/4 after six. Then once those are all nailed down hit the minutes specifically.

 

There are free clock worksheets all over the web. I like using the ones at math-drills.com

 

Also, do you have analog clocks at home? If not get some. Put them where ever you can. We had one in the bathroom, kitchen, dining room, and each kids bedroom. Seems redundant, but....

 

Also, until my children can read analog clocks WELL, they are not allowed a digital watch. ;)

[WIS0320]

I have a 6 year old too. It can be frustrating to realize that they are just done and can't process anymore. I don't have any words of wisdom of my own but awhile ago there was a thread on this forum titled something like, "What do you wish you'd known when you started hsing?" and this post was in that thread. I don't even know who wrote it but I saved it and have printed it out and it is in a page protector in the very front of my lesson planning binder. I look at it almost every day because I need the reminder!

 

I'm not sharing this with you because I think you are wrong, just that it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture when you get aggravated!

 

I wish I'd quit earlier in each subject. Oldest dd caught on to things so fast, and would beg to do more, and so I (and dh, when he did lessons with her) would just keep going ... until she was tired, and started making mistakes, and ended up in tears. Every lesson ended in tears. Until I learned to stop while it was still fun.

 

I wish I hadn't let my face, voice, or manner betray disappointment when a child didn't grasp something that seemed obvious, or forgot something for the nth time, or otherwise performed poorly. I wish I had said "No problem, lots of people find this tricky. 'There's no royal road to learning!'" (which is what I say now, and it makes them laugh, and then everything is good). Aagh. If I had a time machine I would go slap my former self. A lot.

 

In general I wish I had been kinder, yelled less, not thought of their performance as a reflection on me me me, and enjoyed more of our life at home together.

[FO4UR]

Telling time and counting money are things that come with life experience.

 

 

:iagree:

 

 

That's what I was trying to say...give small bits of meaningful life-experiences.

 

Post a piece of paper that says snack at 3:00 (with a picture of an analog clock pointing to 3:00), next to your wall clock...and your dc will learn 3:00 fast.:lol: End of quiet time = 2:30...that's easy...we can play Uno at 7:15...and so on...

 

I like to wait until my dc has some proficiency with the irl application before whipping out the worksheets, and I like to make certain they get the first step before taking the second. (Whole hours, half hours, quarter till/after...and telling time to the exact minute can wait.)

[QuirkyKidAcademy]

HERE is what is working for us right now. I used to get a lot of "4:07" (using your example). This is helping. I used this as a sample and made my own.

[Xuzi]

Ya, all is well here now. I let her off the bed shortly after posting (I mainly put her there so that I wouldn't blow my top! Taking the toys away was just taking the toys *from her bed* which are all stuffed animals. the rest of the [many] toys in her room were still there). We're going to chuck the clocks.

[kitten18]

I had hoped that with maturity the focus would appear, but she is SO easily distracted. Even when I'm in the middle of a sentence she'll look like she's paying attention to me, but then I'll see her eyes slowly slide to the side and I know she's now paying attention to what's out the window instead of at me.

 

I just wanted to address this. I am a VERY visual learner and I'm trying to accept that DD is a VERY auditory learner. It's hard for me, but I try to accept that DD may be listening/learning even if she's not LOOKING at what I'm showing her. Could this be the case with your DD?

[parias1126]

I am sure some may disagree with this, but I gave up on trying to teach telling time to both my DS7 and my DD9. Instead, at the end of our school year last year, I just started applying it to real life stuff. If we had to be somewhere, I would let my kids know what time we had to be there. I would talk about how many minutes it was until we had to get into the car and how long it would take to drive there, etc.

 

They FINALLY started to get it! I always make sure I let them know what time they have to be in bed and keep reminding them and make it a point to say things like, "You still need to get your reading in before bed so you need to start that at 7:30 so that you can get 30 minutes of reading time in before you need to have your lights out at 8:00."

 

This has worked so well that I am just amazed. My non-telling time little girl whom everything comes hard for can now relate to the clock and the time of the day when certain events are supposed to happen. She will even now remind me by looking at the clock if we have to be somewhere and tell me how long we have until we have to be there.

 

I am now a happy mama! I thought my DD9 would NEVER get it. We went over the same MM telling time lesson with lots of tears. That is when I gave up and resorted to relating everything to real life time telling. :001_smile:

[parias1126]

HERE is what is working for us right now. I used to get a lot of "4:07" (using your example). This is helping. I used this as a sample and made my own.

I absolutely love this! Thank you for posting it.

[Mommy22alyns]

I just wanted to address this. I am a VERY visual learner and I'm trying to accept that DD is a VERY auditory learner. It's hard for me, but I try to accept that DD may be listening/learning even if she's not LOOKING at what I'm showing her. Could this be the case with your DD?

 

 

:iagree: Rebecca is very distractable and she can look like she's not paying a bit of attention, but then she can rattle off exactly what she was being taught. It's a little :001_huh:.

 

I've also BTDT with math woes. Total sympathy!

[veggiegal]

You may simply be asking / expecting her to do something she is not cognitively capable of doing yet. It really may be developmental. My son, just turned 9, only this summer finally understood clocks (ironically, with the help of MM). And he is a very strong student otherwise, scoring far above grade level on the standardized test he wrote at the end of last year (grade 3). If it is that frustrating, drop it and come back in a few months (or even years). Its ok. I promise you (barring some seriously missed LD) she will go off to college / adult life knowing how to tell time. :D

[misidawnrn]

I didn't know how to tell time on a face clock until 4th grade, yet I was in the "Program for Advanced Children's Education" in the 3rd grade. I just didn't get it. My dad worked with me during the summer and I finally got it. I would skip it for now.