Teaching children how to tell the time

A child's first watch is a great opportunity to give them some independence and sneak in some basic mathematics at the same time! They’ll feel a new sense of connection to the world around them with this basic, but massively important, landmark skill.

A great age to start your child on their time-telling journey is at around five or six. They may not be able to master concepts such as “o’clock” or am and pm until they’re closer to eight years old, but you can still lay the foundations and have them confidently telling the time in both 12-hour and 24-hour formats well before their tenth birthday.

While we’d love to tell you that teaching your child how to tell the time is as simple as buying them their first watch, you’ll still need to work with them to help them perfect the skill.

A great way to do this is to make sure that they can count all the way up to sixty and know their five times table. That should cover all the numbers they’ll need to pick up telling the time organically and they’ll be adept at counting in multiples of five. You should also start referring to the time in their day-to-day activities. For example, bedtime is at half past six or lunchtime is at one pm. Once the concept of time has significance in their everyday life, you’ve already done a lot of the work!

Why not include other fun and relaxing activities to help with learning to tell the time, like baking or sports and games? How far can they run in thirty seconds? If the cupcakes take forty minutes to bake in the oven, what time will they be ready? Who can set the time on their watch the quickest?

We’d really recommend an analogue watch to begin with so that your child can learn how tell the time traditionally before they move on to digital. They really help build those basic mathematical skills and give a real-time understanding of how time passes.