How do you show a clock to a child? Things I've thought about while making this app, gathered theme by theme.
Explaining 24 hours and AM/PM, the age to start teaching the clock, the sense of time, showing the moving clock before the paper worksheets, what to try when the clock won't read — and why the app puts two clocks side by side. Not step-by-step instructions, but the thinking that comes before them.
Start with whatever catches your eye.
Your child reads the clock just fine. But how do you teach them that a day is 24 hours? Start by making the AM/PM conversion adults do in their heads visible to the child.
Less about the age on the calendar. More about what your child can already see, right now.
Time is invisible. It isn't a thing, and it has no shape. So how do you hand a child the fact that time exists? The answer lives inside one small tool — a clock.
Clock worksheets go more smoothly once a child has watched the hands actually move.
Turning "can't read it" into "no need to yet."
After the author's daughter learned to read the clock, one question lingered: why so fast? This is the after-the-fact answer.