Teach your child to understand the time on the clock. How to teach your child to tell time using a clock quickly and efficiently

How to teach a child about clocks and time?

Teaching children about clocks and time can begin long before school. Teaching a child to use a watch is not difficult if he knows the numbers and you are willing to be patient and pay attention to the child.

In order for your child to understand how to use a watch with a dial, you need to devote at least several lessons to this.

1. Mention time during daily conversations with your child. It is advisable to start doing this long before your first lessons teaching time and clocks. Before explaining to your child how you can tell time using a clock, you need to explain to him:

This way, your child will get used to the idea that there is a way to measure time.

2. Make or buy a large watch in the form of a dial with moving hands. Hang this dial in the children's room so that the child gets used to the clock and plays whenever he wants.

The parent sets an alarm clock in front of the child and draws the child’s attention to the following: there are two arrows on the dial. The small hand shows the hours, the large hand always shows the minutes.

3. Help your child find the relationship between numbers and hours. Show him familiar numbers on the dial and tell him the time, for example, “5 o’clock.” Don’t try to immediately give your child complex concepts about hours and minutes; these concepts will be enough for him for the first time. Let the minute hand stand at 12 o'clock, and you show your baby the hour hand, teaching him to correctly say how many hours he sees on the dial.

Night and morning time is indicated on the clock as follows:

Daytime and evening time are indicated on the clock as follows:

You can consolidate the acquired skills in a playful way.

Invite him to live the day in make-believe. Set the dial hour by hour and comment: for example, 9 o’clock - it’s time for breakfast, 1 o’clock in the afternoon - it’s time for lunch, etc.

- Look at the pictures and name the time at which you do this action. Complete the arrows to indicate the required time on the clock.

- Determine what time it is?

Mark the clock that shows the correct time.

- Look carefully at the pictures and tell me what time it is on the clock.

- Determine which clocks are in a hurry and which ones are late, draw an hour hand.

Encourage your child to set the clock themselves and ask you what time it is.

4. Once your child has learned to tell time using the small hour hand, you can begin teaching the concept of minutes. Ask your child to point to the minute hand.Explain how many minutes the hand shows when it is on one or another number of the dial. If aboutif it is on 12, it means exactly; if it is on 6, it means half.It may be difficult to understand why the arrow at number 3 indicates 15 minutes. In order to eliminate this problem, write the number of minutes under each standard toy clock number, above number 2 - 10 minutes, above number 3 - 15 minutes, etc.

A quarter of an hour is 15 minutes (the large hand has moved 15 divisions, or a quarter of a circle). Half an hour (or half an hour) is 30 minutes (the large hand has passed 30 divisions, or half a circle).

Play games to consolidate minutes.

The child puts hands on a paper clock in the same way as a wall clock shows time. At the same time, he says in full “What time is it now?” For example:08.40 - eight hours forty minutes;06.25 - six hours twenty-five minutes

Set the time: draw an hour hand on the clock.

5. After the child has mastered and learned to tell time using both the hour and minute hands, you can teach the child to use expressions such as:

09.15 - fifteen minutes past ten (this is 15 minutes after nine)
08.50 - ten minutes to nine (that's 10 minutes before nine)
10.30 - half past ten

6. Some dials also have a third hand that is constantly moving. It's called a second and stands for seconds. A second is a moment, they clap their hands, a second passes. Look at the second hand together and clap every second. The lap ended at 60, a minute passed.60 seconds is 1 minute.

7. The watch should be constantly in the baby’s field of vision. Draw your child's attention to the watch, no matter what you do with your baby: during breakfast, games or a walk. When communicating with your baby, always talk about the time, for example, tell him from what time and at what time he can play. Show the time on a toy clock and ask your child to compare it with the picture on a real one.

Questions and tasks:

What does an hour consist of? (of minutes).
How many minutes are there in an hour? (60).
How many seconds are there in a minute? (also 60).
Tell us about the hands of the clock.
Say: “Ra-a-az” - one second has passed. And if you slowly count to 60 (“ra-a-az,” “two-a-a,” etc.), then about one minute will pass. What can you do in one minute? Ask your mom to time it and try to write as many sticks or circles as possible in one minute. Do the math.
The watch face usually has large numbers indicating the hours: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.
Calculate how many minutes fit between any two large numbers. That's right, 5.
Each segment is one minute. When the big arrow moves from one big number to another, it means 5 minutes have passed.
How many minutes are there in half an hour?
How many minutes are there in a quarter hour?
Find the extra word: minute, hour, second, time, half an hour.
Why do they say: “Time is more valuable than gold”? “No amount of money can buy time”?

We carry out tasks for consolidation.

We'll make our own clocks and learn to tell time! We will learn interesting games over time, and we will also be able to download useful materials!

The ability to freely navigate time makes a child more independent and responsible, so it is better to teach him to tell time by the dial of a clock already in preschool age. Although electronic watches greatly simplify this task, it is the dial that makes time space more visual.

At the same time, it is very important to constantly remember that when we teach time by the clock, for children the concepts of “minute”, “second” and “hour” are very abstract, since they cannot compare them with real time intervals. This point will need to be given special attention.

How to make a watch with your child with your own hands?

Simple enough. For this you will need:

compass (or finished circle);
thick cardboard;
marker;
a simple pencil;
ruler;
scissors;
pushpin with a head.

We draw a circle on the cardboard and place numbers indicating the hours along its edge. Using a ruler, measure the distance from the center of the circle to the numbers, and make a narrower minute hand of that length. And we make the sentry wider and shorter. We fix the arrows in the center using a pushpin. Ready!

You can use a more complex ready-made template to make it - for example, print a clock with moving hands on thick printer paper and stick it on a cardboard base.

How to learn to tell time?

Using a simple homemade dummy, we study the watch with the child according to a simple scheme:

We explain that the small hand shows the hour, and the long and narrow hand shows the minute. This explanation looks more logical if you pay attention to the fact that we have very few hours (that’s why the hand is small), but they last a long time (that’s why the hand is so wide). And there are a lot of minutes (that’s why the hand is longer), but they pass quickly (that’s why it’s so narrow). We mix the hands and ask the child to show: which hand shows the hours and which shows the minutes? We practice until the baby learns to distinguish the arrows unmistakably.
We learn to look at how many hours the hour hand shows. Usually children get confused when it is placed in an intermediate position between two numbers, so you need to work on this point.
We explain that five minutes fit between two hours. For clarity, it is better to use a dial where the minutes are written separately. (This will be discussed in a separate paragraph of our article). We train: we call the number and ask the child to say how many minutes it is. After such training, mastering the minute hand will not be difficult.
We move on to the final stage: we put the hands in a certain position and invite the child to determine what time the clock is showing at the moment. We move the arrows, determine the time again, etc.

Then we ask the child to put the arrows in the desired position (for example, at 5:30, 6:40, etc.).

We definitely practice our skills on real watches. At every opportunity, while the child’s interest is still active, ask him what time it is.

Why do you need to know what time it is? Time and daily routine.

Often a child who has learned to tell time well does not understand why he needs it. Therefore, when we study time with a child, we make sure to make the lessons practical.

So, using special cards, it is easy to connect time with the baby’s real daily routine - he will be interested in knowing when he wakes up, plays, puts away toys, goes to kindergarten, watches cartoons, and starts classes in the sports section. At this stage, we smoothly move on to understanding the duration of a time period, learning to compare our actions with the dial of a clock.

Sample cards “daily routine of a 1st grade student in pictures”

How to clearly show a child 5 minutes? How to clearly show 60 minutes to a child?

As already mentioned, children very often find it difficult to determine the minutes. In order for this skill to be perfected, you can use special dials - for example, a dial with a folding edge. Hours are written on its upper part; each interval between adjacent hours is divided into 5 parts, which are drawn with a bright marker.

This helps to remember that in one step of the arrow from number to number, 5 minutes will pass, and not one. Under the main dial we attach an additional one, on which all the minutes are written (5, 10, 15, etc.). During the lesson, we try to determine the time and compare how many minutes the child has logged with the designation on the lower dial.

You can make an additional dial with the minutes marked on the outer edge of the main one - visual memory will help the child learn this information.

Visual study of time with the constructor

For clarity, you can use the usual Lego constructor, as we used it to teach visual mathematics. The dial is drawn on a large sheet of paper, with hours on the inner edge and minutes on the outer edge. We lay out its contours using construction blocks, using the same blocks as an arrow. We move the arrow and determine how much time it showed.

What can you do in 1 second? What can you do in 1 minute?

In order for the child to better feel the duration of each time period, after he learns to work with a real clock, we conduct small experiments - we find out how much time it takes to do this or that action, what can be done in the designated period of time. This can be done as a separate game, or it can be combined with ordinary everyday activities - for example, try to determine how much time a child takes for breakfast, washing, getting dressed. So he will gradually learn to calculate his time.

Studying time for preschoolers can be completed with a simple exercise that is often used in school: a certain position of the hands is drawn on the dial, and in the boxes under it you need to write what time the dial shows. This task is used in many tests for admission to high-status schools.

And of course, any child will be happy to guess a couple of riddles or learn a simple rhyme about a clock. For example, these:

And day and night they go,

And they won’t budge. (watch)

Runs like a squirrel

On the dial... (arrow)

He takes his last step - and another hour has passed. (minute hand)

I walk without legs

I speak without a mouth.

I point out to everyone

I advise everyone. (watch)

Without unnecessary phrases,

Without many words,

The ticking of the clock will tell you,

When to sleep

When to play

When to run outside.

DIY clock made of cardboard

This activity is for children who already know numbers and count confidently. Now we are learning to determine the time and even lay it out from the numbers on a special scoreboard.

You can teach your child to tell time already in preschool age; The sooner he learns to do this, the easier it will become for his parents. In addition, test tasks on the ability to work with clocks are used as entrance tests in many high-status educational institutions.

Cardboard clocks are simply irreplaceable - for children, activities with them become much more understandable and visual. At the same time, it is absolutely not necessary to buy factory-made teaching aids and dummies of watches, since every parent can make a watch with their own hands for a child.

What is needed for this:

Thick cardboard.
Compass.
Markers.
Scissors.
Empty ballpoint pen refill.
Matches.

Using a compass we draw two circles with the same center - one larger, the other slightly smaller. On the inner circle we put sixty divisions at equal intervals and arrange the numbers according to the dial of a real watch. We write Arabic numbers; children learn to work with Roman numbers around the second grade of primary school.

Let's cut out our clocks. We make hands for them - as usual, a wide and short hour hand and a narrower and longer one for the minute hand. We attach them to the dial using a piece of empty rod, the edges of which are then melted in the fire of a burning match and flattened with a matchbox.

Ready! You can safely take such a hand-made cardboard clock to school when it’s time to polish your ability to tell time.

Well, if we want to teach the child before school, then for classes we will prepare an empty dial of an electronic watch (four empty square windows) and numbers for it. Images of a clock whose hands show a certain time are also useful.

We explain to the child the basics: which hand shows the hours, which one shows the minutes, how many divisions there are in total. And then we learn to determine by the location of the hands how many hours it is and how many minutes it is. If with a clock everything usually works out very easily, then with minutes many children get confused. Therefore, you can draw on the dial next to the designation of each hour the designation of the number of minutes (10, 15, 20, etc.).

We try to show the same time on our watch as in the pictures - we put the hands in the desired position, determine how many hours and minutes we have received.

When the basics are mastered, we move on to the next stage: we lay out the number of hours and minutes on the electronic dial, and the child shows them on his watch. This exercise is often used when applying to high-status schools.

And, of course, the final stage will be to practice the acquired knowledge on a real watch. Ask as often as possible what time it is, draw your child’s attention to the clock when you are going somewhere or planning to go somewhere after some time. So the baby will early learn not only to tell time, but also to feel and plan.

Rida Khasanova

Adults can easily tell the time using a clock, but for a child this mechanism is completely unfamiliar; the child does not understand why the numbers are drawn on the device and why the arrows move. But the ability to understand time - one of the most important skills, without which independent life is unimaginable.

The sooner a child learns how to tell time using a clock, the sooner he will become independent and learn to organize his time. In order to teach a child to understand time using a clock with hands in an accessible and understandable way, it is important not to rush and start with the simplest concepts.

Girl and clock

Why and when should a child be taught to tell time using a clock?

If we imagine that an adult does not know how to navigate time, then he will not be able to understand when to go to work, when to return from work, or what time lunch or dinner will arrive.

Likewise, it is difficult for a child who does not know the concept of hours and minutes to determine when his parents will pick him up from kindergarten. Therefore, the baby may be capricious when he is asked to wait five minutes - after all, he does not understand how long it is - what if it’s a whole day?

When the child is at the age where he can stay home alone, mom or dad will warn him that he will be back in 2 hours. But without the ability to determine the time by the dial of a watch, the baby may become confused and scared because he does not know when his parents will come.

Therefore, it is important to promptly teach your child to navigate by the clock. This will help him become more disciplined and ready for 1st grade at school.

No specific age when can you start training. To begin with, the child must be able to count to at least 60 and know what these numbers look like. Some children learn this by the age of 5, others a little later - by 6 or 7.

A child who understands hours and minutes will already wear a wristwatch not only as an accessory, but also as a time orientation device. What will help him be more confident and punctual.

Where to start learning?

Time for a child is the concept of something vague, non-existent, because it cannot be touched or touched. Of course, children understand that life moves forward, but it is still difficult for them to formulate this thought.

Learning to tell time using a clock should happen gradually, from small to large, so that the child does not get confused in his head.

To begin with, it is worth explaining to the child what time is, which is called the future, present and past. You can remember these concepts using the simplest examples from life. For example:

Yesterday we were visiting my grandfather - that’s the past;
now we are playing in the park - this is the present;
Tomorrow morning we will go to kindergarten - this is the future.

Examples should be given as simple as possible, which are understandable and interesting to a little person, then he will quickly learn and grasp the basic concepts of time

You also need to teach your child to easily understand all the seasons and name their main signs. For example, if it snows, it means winter has come. When the flowers bloom and the grass turns green, it’s spring. In summer the hot sun shines and you can eat ice cream, and in autumn the birds fly south and leaves fall from the trees.

When your baby learns about the seasons, you need to go to names of months. He must understand well which season this or that month belongs to. Then explain that a month has 28, 29, 30 or 31 days, and that it consists of weeks that have 7 days.

Calendar for learning the seasons and months

Let's move on to the concept of minutes and hours

When the child clearly understands the seasons, months, weeks and days of the week, you can start talking about hours and minutes. The easiest way to explain this is with simple life examples.

To begin with, invite your child to remember how his day begins - in the morning, when he wakes up, has breakfast and goes to kindergarten. Then the day comes and with it lunch and a quiet hour, and after the evening, when everyone has dinner and goes to bed, night comes.

Here we need to explain that morning, afternoon, evening and night generally called a day. And the day lasts the same every time - 24 hours. And in order to know when to get up, have lunch, or pick up their child from kindergarten, parents determine everything by the clock.

Show your child a regular second clock and ask him to tell you what he sees on it. Clocks for teaching children should have prominent numbers and minute divisions. Then offer to count all the small lines - there will be 60 of them, and they are called minutes. When the largest arrow passes the circle, one hour has passed, and if the smallest one has passed, then one minute has passed.

Since children learn best while playing, you need to make a model of a dial with arrows together with their parents.

To do this, you need to cut out a circle from thick cardboard, draw a watch dial on it and paint it, write the numbers in bright colors. Cut out the hour and minute hands from cardboard and attach them to the center of the clock so that they can move freely (for example, using a push pin or bolt).

An example of a homemade dial

Training steps on the simulator:

Motivation is to explain that a person needs a watch so that he is not late and gets a lot done.
Introduction - tell what a dial is, that the hands move only in one direction, and together answer the question why time does not go back.
Start with whole numbers. For convenience, leave only the large hand on the dial and work with the clock, then attach the minute hand and find out how it differs from the hour hand. To make it easier for your child to understand time, you can draw an activity next to each hour: breakfast, sleep or games - so that the pictures coincide with the child’s daily routine.
Try to determine the time by setting simple values on the dial with small intervals. For example, 3:10 or 4:30.

When the baby becomes free to determine 5-minute intervals, you can complicate the task and explain how the time will look like 12:17 or 9:37 on the clock. Invite the child to set the arrows himself at the time when he goes to bed. And in the morning, the parents will move the hands, and the baby will name the time at which he woke up.

The child learns to tell time

Consolidating new knowledge in a playful way

When a child learns to use a regular and training dial and can tell what time it is, this success is worth building on from time to time. Be sure to contact him with questions such as:

please tell me what time it is?
dad said he would come in half an hour. What time will it be?
you woke up at 8 o’clock, and now it’s already 8.30 – how much time has passed?
remind me that I need to call my grandmother in 15 minutes.

It is useful to buy a real wall clock for your baby’s room and place it in the most visible place.

When the child can confidently answer the question: “What time is it?”, you can begin to get acquainted with the second hand. For clarity, it can be explained that a second passes in one clap of your hands. There is no need to rush the child, but it is imperative to say words of praise. It takes different amounts of time for all children to begin to understand clocks.

How to help your child navigate the clock using games:

Create a daily routine– place the hands on the clock model at the time when the child wakes up. Move them and talk together about what he does at this or that time of the day.
Set the arrows to a certain time and ask the question: “Is it correct that it is now 2 hours 10 minutes?” The child must confirm or deny what was said. If he finds it difficult to answer, prompt him with leading questions.
Play "Bus Station"- determine what time the car should leave and set the arrows to the required time. First, pronounce the time in whole numbers, and then complicate the task by naming definitions such as a quarter of an hour, noon.

Children's watch with images of the daily routine

Children should be taught to value time and manage it correctly from childhood. Periodically ask what useful or good deed can be accomplished in one minute, half an hour or hour. You should not hope for quick results and under no circumstances rush your child, since time orientation is one of the most difficult skills. The younger the child, the shorter the lesson should be. And when the baby begins to understand minutes and hours, it is worth purchasing a bright wristwatch for him - then he will begin to quickly apply the acquired knowledge in practice.

You can learn how to correctly teach a child to tell time using a clock by watching the video:

26 August 2018, 17:11

No modern person can live without understanding the essence of time. Therefore, parents are faced with the need to teach their child to correctly tell time using a clock. Practice shows that if you do it correctly, the training process will be quite simple and will even bring pleasure to an interested child. Let's get acquainted with the recommendations of experts.

Difficulties of the process

Teaching a child to understand the “subtleties” of a dial involves a number of difficulties.

Some children, even those who know numbers well, do not want to learn new things, believing that the time can always be checked on a mobile phone or digital watch.
The standard dial uses two numbers - from 1 to 12 (hours) and from 1 to 60 (minutes), which are quite difficult for some children to distinguish.
Finally, to understand time, a child must be able to count to 60. It is also advisable to understand the rules of multiplication by 5. Since experts advise learning time from the age of 5 years, many parents first have to go through counting with their child.

Despite these obstacles, it is necessary to determine the time, so mothers and fathers should be patient and help the child understand the difficult issue.

Concept of time

Before teaching your child to recognize hours and minutes on a dial, you need to give him an idea of what time is. This concept is abstract, it is impossible to see or touch it, so the work ahead is not easy.

Boring explanations from an adult can forever destroy a child’s desire to study, so “lessons” should be conducted in a playful way, trying to come up with something new every time.

In the early stages, you can invite your child to play such games.

"Day and night". The ability to distinguish between daytime and nighttime is being developed. As a rule, the activity does not cause difficulties.
"When it happens." The child is given a specific situation (for example, children go to kindergarten). He needs to determine whether it occurs during the day or at night.
"Parts of the day." The task is aimed at developing the concepts of “morning”, “day”, “evening”, “night” and distinguishing them. First, the parent, asking leading questions, helps the child answer what happens in the morning (children get up, go to wash, go to kindergarten, and so on). Then he consolidates the acquired knowledge, inviting the child to independently list the signs of morning - not only the actions of the child himself, but changes in the world around him (it becomes light, the sun appears).

After such classes, the child should understand the following concepts:

day;
parts of the day - morning, afternoon, evening, night.

When the baby understands what a day is and that every day is divided into 4 parts, you can begin the next stage of learning.

First lesson

Teaching your child to tell the time on a watch is not easy, so the first step is to get them familiar with the dial. Parents need to visualize the idea of time by drawing a circle and dividing it into 4 parts, representing the parts of the day. Having provided such a drawing with arrows, you should give the child the opportunity to control their movement. The work is structured like this: the adult describes this or that part of the day, the child must guess what is being discussed and use the arrows to set the correct time interval.

It should be remembered that children distinguish the concepts of a time group according to the characteristics of their activities, so we must strive to ensure that they remember that in the morning kids get up, in the afternoon they have lunch, in the evening they come home, and at night they sleep.

To help your child quickly remember words that are new to him, you can invite him to listen to audio fragments or read poems that mention the names of parts of the day:

“Sunny Day” (Ya. Akim);
“It’s already evening” (S. Yesenin).

When the child learns to accurately select the required period of time on the training dial, relating to the morning, evening or other part of the day, you can move on to the next stage of work.

Account Rules

To learn how to use a clock, your baby must know numbers up to 60, and also count in fives and tens. How to carry out work in this direction?

Learning to count to 60 with your child should be done constantly, but in a rhythm that is comfortable for the child: you should not require him to remember all the numbers at once, because everyone has their own abilities, which must be taken into account.

Gradually, the child will remember the numbers, and this technique will help: ask him to write down a series from 1 to 60, pronouncing each number. The key to success is regular repetition, so it is necessary to ensure that the child independently refreshes the numbers in his memory every day until he completely remembers them.

The next part of the training is memorizing numbers that are multiples of five. This will help make the job of teaching time easier. First, you need to explain to your child that the numbers that we are now going to study end in either 5 or 0. Let him find these numbers in random order among the entire set of numbers from 1 to 60.
When the child has learned to cope with this task easily and quickly, we need to complicate the task for him - find numbers that are multiples of 5 in order: 5-10-15 and so on. Each “find” must be spoken out loud.

An adult should listen carefully to see if the child finds everything correctly. If he names all the numbers, be sure to praise him; if he missed some, offer to try again, but be more attentive.

Write down all the numbers that are divisible by 5 in a single row and hang the sheet in a visible place. By constantly repeating them, the child will quickly learn to count in fives.

Getting to know the watch face

The next part of teaching your child to tell time is introducing him to a clock face. He is already familiar with a circle divided into 4 segments, but now his knowledge needs to be expanded. Psychologists recommend purchasing a special children's watch with funny drawings and large numbers so that the baby will be interested in working with them.

You should tell your child that a watch is a kind of pie (or orange), which is divided into pieces (or slices), all together they are called a dial. The “pie” contains numbers from 1 to 12, and there are also two arrows:

the small thick one represents the clock;
the long one shows minutes.

Why is the hour hand thicker? Because an hour is a longer period of time than a minute.

If your child immediately encounters difficulties and does not understand the meaning of the minute and hour hands, you can purchase a special educational set with a cardboard clock, with which your child will quickly master the necessary concepts.

Having examined the watch, having learned about the purpose of each hand, it is necessary to observe its movement, while the second hand can be mentioned (so that the baby does not have the feeling that something is being hidden from him), but not examined in detail, so as not to confuse the child. You can say this: “This hand, which moves faster than all the others, shows seconds, the shortest units of time. Count "one-two-three." These are seconds."

Drawing a dial yourself with the help of your parents will help you consolidate your knowledge. It is important to use colored pencils or markers and color each “piece of the pie” in a different color to visualize the 5-minute segments. It is important for adults to ensure that the child correctly places the numbers from 1 to 12 in the circle.

Studying the clock

Now you need to teach your child to understand time. Parents should tell him the following.

There are 24 hours in a day. That is, morning, day, evening and night together equal 24 hours.
There are only 12 digits on the watch dial, so the small day hand goes through a full circle twice.
It should be said that the division of the dial can be compared to the slices of an orange: several slices (each of which is equivalent to a segment of 5 minutes) together form a whole - the dial.

Now you need to show your child that when the hour hand points to a number, it points to the hour. For example, if it is on the number 4, it means it is 4 o'clock. Using special simulator watches, you need to practice setting the hour hand to one or another number and telling the time.

Then the task becomes more complicated, it is necessary to explain that the position of the minute hand at the number “12” means the exact time. Also, using a cardboard dial, try setting the hour, six o’clock and other options.

Getting to know the minutes

When the baby has learned to determine the exact time, you should complicate the task for him. First, parents explain the following points:

there are 60 minutes in an hour;
On the dial there are small divisions, not signed, each of them means minutes.

You can discuss with your child why the minutes are not signed, and lead him to the correct answer - in order to save space on the dial.

Now, taking a cardboard clock, we show the child the movement of the minute hand from 12 to 1, telling him that 5 minutes have passed. What time is it now? He must answer: 4 hours 5 minutes.

Ask your child to point out 4 hours and 10 minutes. Having gone through the entire circle and pronouncing each time value, you should complicate the task: ask the preschooler to set the clock to, for example, 6 hours 15 minutes, then 8 hours 50 minutes.

If something doesn’t work out, you shouldn’t yell at your child or get nervous; it’s important to understand the cause of the difficulty. The baby may confuse the hour and minute hands - then the simulator needs to be replaced with a more visual one. Perhaps he simply forgot to count in fives and tens - then he should be remembered.

Training

To consolidate knowledge, you should play the game “Clock” with your child. It will require the clocks that the family has: children's clocks, old wall clocks with large hands, cardboard clocks. A fictional story will help set the game atmosphere - for example, we need to help a fairy-tale hero get home by correctly solving riddles about time from an evil witch.

There are two types of tasks.

The parent says the time, the child sets it on the clock. For this task, a colorful cardboard version with arrows is best suited.
The adult sets the time on the dial; the child’s task is to name it accurately. You should act according to the principle “from simple to complex.”

It is better to study every day, but not for long, so that the child does not get tired and lose interest in learning.

Comparison of time and part of the day

In order for the baby to perceive the abstract category of time even better, he should be taught to compare a specific hour and a period of the day.

An adult sets the time on the dial. The child must recognize him, say what time it is, tell what he usually does at this time, and draw a conclusion - what part of the day it is.
An adult uses two dials, one of them shows morning time, the other shows evening time. Then he asks the question - what time do you usually go to bed? The child’s task is to understand from the clock what time it shows, decide for himself whether it is morning or evening, and answer the question.

If there is any difficulty, you should help the preschooler with several clarifying questions.

Minute training

The most difficult thing is to tell children how to navigate time if the minute hand is not exactly at 5 or 10, but between them. Parents should tell the child that between these numbers there are 4 divisions, each of which corresponds to a minute; it is best to clearly demonstrate this with the help of a large clock.

It is also necessary to tell the child that often even adults using a clock cannot determine the time with an accuracy of a minute, rounding it up. For example: if the minute hand moves just a little from 5 to 10, then only one minute has passed. And to the question “What time is it?” you can answer “Six minutes to twelve.” The clock exercises described above will help you consolidate your knowledge.

Every parent should understand that the child needs to understand time terminology before he goes to school, so the work should be carried out regularly. But you shouldn’t force your child to train; it’s best to use a playful form and turn each “lesson” into a kind of adventure.

Being able to plan your time, and, therefore, understand it, is useful not only for adults, but also for children. But the perception of time is subjective and depends on various factors. So, when a child starts a new or interesting activity, it flies by unnoticed. But when performing uninteresting tasks or agonizingly waiting for some events, even fifteen minutes seem like an eternity.

In addition to subjectivity, the understanding of time is also complicated by abstraction: it cannot be touched or felt, but it is there and each of us feels its passage. At the same time, most 6-7 year old children have a visual-figurative type of thinking and therefore have difficulty operating with abstract definitions.

Before you start learning, your child should already be able to and know a lot:

count freely to at least 60;
understand basic time concepts: last year, tomorrow, last night, a year later, a month ago, etc.;
know and understand the sequence of seasons;
know the names of the days of the week and their order;
have an understanding of concepts such as minute and second. It is best to do this in a playful way, for example, answering the question: “What can you do in one second?”, and immediately answer, accompanying the answer with a certain action: blink, jump, etc.

If a child has difficulties in one of the listed areas, then it is better to postpone acquaintance with clocks until he has mastered general time concepts. To do this, talk to your child more often, plan the near future, discuss what happened some time ago, often talk through the sequence of any events or actions (for example: first you came from a walk, then you took off your shoes, then you washed your hands and, finally, you sat down to dinner) .

How to learn time using a clock with hands?

After the child understands essence of time sequence various events, concepts of past, present and future, etc., you can go directly to the clock.

To do this, you will need a watch with a fairly large diameter and with moving hands. You can use both toy mechanisms and real ones. The latter must be without glass and other elements that impede access to the arrows. In any case, the dial should be monochromatic so as not to distract the child’s attention to patterns, pictures, etc. In addition, on a simple monochromatic background, the arrows and numbers are visible much better.

If desired, you can draw a clock on cardboard, but without the hands. Pencils and pens can play their role. The drawn clock should also not be overloaded with unnecessary details: only clear large numbers and second divisions.

Learning should begin with an explanation of the simplest concepts. First of all tell your child about arrows: what they serve, in what direction and at what speed they move.
With the minute hand at 12, begin moving the hour hand around the dial, announcing the time at each change of position. Then invite your child to set the hour hand and tell the time himself. This may not work the first time, so be prepared to be patient.

Once the hour hand is mastered, move on to the minute hand. Move it from 12 to 1, explaining to the child that 5 minutes have “passed.” Move it again and call the time again, but do not touch the hour hand, let it remain in one place.

Having dealt with the arrows individually, you can begin to study them joint movement. It’s better to start with simple examples - 1:05, 3:20, 7:45, etc. Then you can move on to more complex combinations - 2:48, 6:17, 8:09). Don’t forget the position of the arrows when they are on the same line and looking in the same direction - 1:05, 2:10, 3:30, etc.

At the last stage of training, you can begin more complex tasks. Having placed the arrows on any numbers, ask the child to show the time that will come in:

3 hours;
40 minutes;
1 hour and 45 minutes, etc.

Similar to the examples above, you can ask the child to indicate the time that was a certain number of hours and minutes ago. Well, after this, you can begin to master such complex concepts as “a quarter to one,” “half past one,” “twenty to twenty,” etc. The child has achieved significant results by learning to determine the time by the hands of a clock, which means he can master such terms without difficulty .

How to improve your skills?

Do not forget that any knowledge and skills are acquired much easier if you practice them in a playful way. Organize a themed Olympiad or quiz with your child. Prepare tasks in advance and invite your child to come up with them for you too. When it's your turn to answer questions, periodically give incorrect answers so that your child has the opportunity to check and correct them. This kind of mental work will help reinforce what he has learned, and you can make sure that your child has learned to tell time correctly.