Day 3 on telling the time! The weather in Oklahoma has turned a corner, and temperatures are on the rise. We don’t have a huge window before it’s too hot to do anything prolonged outside. So today I made the most of the sunshine and took the boys outside for our academic time. More on that in a second. First up! Craft! On the recommendation of my friend Aimeé, who teaches in London, we used flowers as another way of teaching time.
For the craft you will need
- Flower template with 12 petals (linked below)
- glue
- Colored card
- Markers
- Scissors
I found this template online for a flower, and printed it out on some colored card stock. I worked on cutting my flower out, whilst the boys worked on theirs. It turned out to be a pretty unsuccessful endeavor. So to speed things along and keep us on track I cut out the outside of the shape, then the boys just cut the straights to the middle, in between each petal.
Next the boys wrote their hours onto each individual petal. They’ve really got a fab grasp now of the lay out of a clock and they did the hours with ease. I then showed them how to fold each petal down. On the reverse of each petal we wrote the minutes that correspond with the hour. Finally they used their scissors to cut a stem and some leaves and we glued it all together onto a piece of paper.
I wanted the boys to do a little writing, so once they’d glued down their flowers we each wrote “I can tell the time!” Under our flowers. I did tracing dots for Teddy, he didn’t want to miss out. Next I let them fold in all their petals and I read out a minute, like “20”, and the boys found it and told me the hour it was attached to. I’m hoping if we do enough activities like this it will become second nature when they glance at a clock.
After a little rest, and my daily wipe down of Arthie, who had covered himself in marker, we headed outside. I had moved my car onto the street, leaving us with the whole drive way to play with. I used some string and made William hold one end of it. I attached a piece of chalk to the other end and used it to make a perfect (as perfect as you get with a 5 year old holding your center marker) circle. I then chalked the numbers around the circumference.
Once our clock was ready it was time to get to work. Except Arthur had realized he was outside, and not within the confines of the back yard. So we spent the next 20 minutes chasing him up and down the street until he was finally ready to accept that he had to stay within 40m of me. I gave him the chalks and he was happy.
Second attempt at learning something. This time we got it done! We used the same digital task cards from this morning and I shouted out a time to the boys. William was big hand, Teddy was little hand, and off they went! Every time I shouted out they discussed then laid on the giant clock to display it using their bodies.
This really was an extraordinarily entertaining time. Anything that gets the boys moving is always a phenomenal activity, and it really sets up the rest of their day if they’ve had enough time outside being active.
Once we’d exhausted all our cards, much to the amusement of next doors gardener, who was watching us with slight confusion on his face, we stayed outside to play. The boys chalked, and ran, and jumped and climbed our trees. I really loved it all, and felt like they did too. Tomorrow we finish our formal learning of time, and hopefully they will have something retained in their long term memory, even if they haven’t though, this week has been a blast. See you tomorrow for the conclusion. Place your bets on whether anyone can tell the time properly during our final test!
LINKS AND SOURCES TO RESOURCES
- Craft: 12 petal flower template
- Read: Daylight savings reading comprehension
- Educate: clock task cards
- Watch: ChaCha’s Time Management
Raising Truffles 