Daughter struggling with telling time...

[MiniBlondes]

My DD7 is in Horizons 2 Math after being in PS her first 2 years of school. She catches on pretty quickly to Math, but has really been struggling with telling time. We have a small clock model from Carson-Delosa. In general she seems to understand how to tell time as long as the minute hand is before the 6. But after the minute hand passes 6, I lose her.

 

I have tried every way that I can possibly think of to explain it to her. She can't seem to understand that the hour hand is just getting closer to the next hour. The most recent technique that I tried was the birthday technique. That seemed to click at first, but as soon as I asked her to do it a few times on her own, she was lost again.

 

Can anyone recommend a resource, a game, a trick... anything?

 

Thanks in advance! :)

[swellmomma]

My boys both struggled. Ds9 is still working on time to the half hour. DS14 couldn't figure it out until closer to 12 yrs old.

 

I got them both digital watches and started with that. In the kitchen I hung an analog clock above the digital clock on the microwave. That way they saw the 2 together constantly. I would randomly ask them to tell me what time it was etc.

 

Ds14 still struggles with elapsed time and really has to think hard to process it. I suspect ds9 will struggle the same way.

 

My final trick was to leave it be. As long as they could read a digital clock I didn't worry about it, just practicing over time was enough. The connection is eventually there if they see it consistently. Learning to read an analog clock just isn't that big of a deal to me with a young child, because the vast majority of clocks we encounter are digital. How many digital clocks are in your house vs analog?

[Matryoshka]

We have a small clock model from Carson-Delosa. In general she seems to understand how to tell time as long as the minute hand is before the 6. But after the minute hand passes 6, I lose her.

 

Can anyone recommend a resource, a game, a trick... anything?

 

 

Does this clock model have different colors for the minute/hour hands and their corresponding numbers? (ie red hour hand and red hour numbers/blue minute hand, blue minute numbers)? That's the manipulative that got my kids telling time. Blue points to blue, red points to red. And counting by 5's around the clock.

[Sameera]

As soon as my kids went through this book, First Lessons in Arithmetic by W.J Milne, their time telling issues flew out in space. (You can read it free, online).

 

There is a Telling the Time snap game, which you can get from Amazon, if you think your DD still needs a push.

[Brooketopia]

I couldn't tell time until well into the fourth grade and I turned out just fine. My $.02 is that this is not an issue to freak out about.

 

Twenty years from now it won't matter if she learned to tell time when she was 7 or 10.

[Dana]

Took away digital clocks in the house, replaced with analog. Made a big difference.

[Wheres Toto]

Having an analog clock right next to a digital clock worked for my son.

[Reya]

I'm dyslexic and had the HARDEST time with this! I didn't really get it until 4th grade. :p I honestly wouldn't sweat it too much. It's not foundational to anything else. Maybe next year it'll be cake! In my experience, kids either just GET this, or they don't. If they don't, they'll usually get it just fine in 6 months to a year.

[LMD]

My DD struggled at the same age and stage in math. We were both frustrated. We moved on.

 

It did click just a few weeks later though, what really helped was that she used her birthday money to buy herself a watch. This watch is wonderful, it has the 1-12 numbers for hours as well as 5min increments. It has 'hour' written on the small hand and 'minute' written on the long hand. She got it.

[Ellie]

Buy her a watch (analog). Refer to it frequently. Make telling-time a regular, on-going thing in your house. She'll get it eventually. :-)