For the past few weeks now, Isabelle has been insistent that she wears a watch. She received a little digital Minnie Mouse watch for Christmas and I think it makes her feel grown up. She gets rather excited telling me that it is morning, she also tells me its night time to, although I very much think that it is more to do with the light/dark rather than her actually being able to tell the time.
Her interest in telling the time is growing but being only three isn’t hard to explain to her. We’ve had some reasonable success though, she understands that there are 12 numbers on our clocks and she will happily count them on an analogue clock. I know that right now it’s not the most important thing for her to be able to tell the time but having her ask what time it is helps her understand the structure to her day. She knows that half 8 means we get ready to go to preschool, 1pm is lunch time, 6pm and daddy is home from work and that 7pm means that it is time to get ready for bed.
Now that she has a slight understanding she is becoming less frustrated, sometimes I take it for granted that she never had a concept of time and that she had to take our word for it if we mentioned it was too late to be painting or putting on our skates and that it is in fact too early to be phoning nana in the morning.
When she is a little older and more careful of her possessions then we will take her to pick out her first real watch from The Watch Hut just like my mum did with me and she can wear a watch just like Daddy does.
Written in collaboration with The Watch Hut
Alyce Wilson
at 10:55 pmMy 3-year-old is at a similar stage in development. While I haven’t been able to teach him how to tell time, he happily helped me out when I was in the pool and couldn’t see by telling me the numbers the hands were pointing to!
I found your blog via a link at the Mommy Bloggers group at Circle of Moms.