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Telling time can be frustrating for some kids because it can feel so abstract to them. How do you help them? Build a fun learning clock!
This experiment involves building a customizable teaching clock to help young children learn how to tell time. It’s a lesson in telling time, skip counting, and exercising creativity (by decorating your clock!).
Let’s teach our kids how to tell time!
How to make the Tick Tock, Craft the Clock experiment
Supplies you will need
For this experiment, you’ll need:
- Piece of cardboard
- Construction paper (2, different colors)
- Marker
- Brads
- Scissors
- Glue
Here is a book about telling time to accompany this experiment!
Before you start
Watch little hands around the hot glue gun and scissors!
Instructions
Here is how to do this experiment with your child:
Step 1: Cut circles for the body of the clock
First, cut two circles with your cardboard pieces. One should be about 2″ smaller in diameter. I used two mixing bowls of different sizes to make my cardboard circles.
Next, use the cardboard circles to trace circles onto your construction paper and cut the circles out.
Step 2: Glue pieces together
Simply glue the large circle onto the cardboard backing and the smaller circle in the middle of the large circle.
Step 3: Cut out the hour and minute hands
The length that you cut these hour and minute hands will depend on how large you made your circles in step 1.
I decided to draw straight lines that were a little longer than the lengths that I wanted them with an arrowhead on one side. We’re going to cut them to the correct length in the next step.
Make the minute hand at least 1″ longer than the hour hand. You want to be able to see the number they are pointing to on the clock!
Use the cardboard cut-outs to trace the arrows onto the construction paper, cut them out, and glue them together.
For a finishing touch, I used my marker to outline the arrows.
Step 4: Attach hour and minute hands to the clock
You can use measuring tape or simply eyeball it to find the midpoint of the clock. Mark the midpoint with a pen or pencil and puncture a small hole in the cardboard circle.
Next, use that hole as a guide for where to create the hole in each of your arrows. You can also cut off any excess from your arrows in this step.
Using a pen or pencil, puncture a small hole in each arrow.
Using your brad, attach the hands of the clock, with the minute hand closest to the body of the clock and the hour hand on top.
Step 5: Write numbers of the clock on the smaller circle
Add the numbers of the clock around the smaller circle (or you can wait to write all of the numbers in a couple of steps).
Step 6: Hot glue the smaller cardboard circle to the larger cardboard circle
Once the arrows are on the smaller circle and you have bent the brad legs to make it flat, it’s time to add the final circle to our clock!
Hot glue the back of the smaller cardboard circle and place it in the middle of the larger cardboard circle.
Step 7: Write the numbers around the clock
Now, onto writing the numbers on the outer portion of the clock!
We made the clock this way so that we could display the minutes and the hours separately to introduce the clock and help kids learn how to tell time.
For our clock, we will write the minutes on the outer, larger circle (only by 5’s) and the hours along the inner circle.
Step 8: Start telling time!
If your child is new to telling time, I would first stick to the time on the hour (2:00, 7:00, etc.), then the half-hour (2:30, 7:30). It’s important not to overwhelm them when they’re first starting.
The STEM behind the Tick Tock, Craft the Clock experiment
This experiment teaches:
- How to tell time
- Skip counting
- Creativity
How it works
Building a somewhat simple, but colorful learning clock like in this experiment gives kids an opportunity to have a small clock that they can manipulate and learn more about the minutes and hours on a clock.
It helps them to differentiate hours from minutes on a clock and how each is designed on a clock face to read the time.
How to tell time
This experiment is a great way to introduce the clock and how to tell time to a young child.
They learn the parts of a clock, how to differentiate between the hour and minute hands, and how to learn which number to read when telling the time.
If your child is just starting out with a clock and telling time, it’s best to start with times on the hour (2:00, 7:00). Once they feel confident with that, move onto half-hour, then quarters.
Telling time can feel overwhelming for some kids, but starting with times on the hour and moving in segments can help with that feeling.
Skip counting
To write the minutes on the clock, you have to skip count by 5’s. It’s a hidden lesson skip counting!
If your child is not familiar with skip counting or just needs practice, it’s a good idea to talk about skip counting with them first before writing the minutes along the clock.
My child is newly 5 and we had not yet covered skip counting, so we took this opportunity to cover some of the basics of skip counting. We started with 2’s and 10’s, then worked our way to 5’s. You can do this by using your hands (one hand is 5, two hands are 10, then start again), some beads, or even sets of Unifix cubes.
Then, once they are confident in skip counting, you can have them help you with drawing the minutes along the clock!
Creativity
Except for writing the minutes and hours along the edge of the clock, this learning clock is completely customizable.
Have your child pick out the colors of construction paper you use, which color goes where on the face of the clock, and even have them draw on the clock itself! Just be sure that the numbers are visible.
More experiments about time to try out with your child
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