The Digital Age and Telling Time

Does anyone still have an analog clock up on the wall?  You know, the type of clock that is round with 12 numbers around the edge.  I know you can still buy them.  In fact, when my first child was born, I bought one with Lightning McQueen on it.  The second hand makes a ticking sound which was annoying to me, but it seemed to calm him.  Did you know the resting heartrate is 60-80 beats per minute?  I've been told that music that plays at that rate is calming for that reason.  Maybe the ticks on the clock did the same thing.  But better still, having the clock, in some way must have been helping him to understand the sense of time. 

We as a family have a couple of rules with time.  First, if mommy or daddy say something like, "wait a minute," we really do wait a minute.  Second, we tend to have our routine set up on the o'clocks.  For example, dinner is always 6 o'clock.  Bedtime is always 8:00.  We will tell them if it is 7:30 that it is 7:30 and they have 30 minutes.  Now our older son who is 4 has begun to ask if he can go to bed at 8:30 instead.  He also recently asked us for a wrist watch to wear and he reads the time to us (it's a digital watch, but he can still read the time).

I guess my point is, many think our children are young and they can't tell time.  But why not expose them to true words, a true sense of time, and the actual times.  It never hurts to say more to our children.  They are thirsting for knowledge.  Don't hold back.  They may not figure out time and how to tell it until much later, but at least we are exposing them to the concept.

Are we talking peas or carrots?

As our children are developing their number recognition, it is important to assign a unit to the number.  If you are counting peas, count up to the number of peas.  For example you would say 18 peas.  This is helping your child on multiple levels.  First, the counting helps the child to learn the ordering of numbers.  Second, it is reinforcing vocabulary like peas.  Third, it is preparing young children to be able to unitize their numbers and have a clear sense of what the number refers to.  So as we're counting out loud, verbally say what the number refers to.