How to make a homemade practice clock

Hi, Future Ticia 2023 here, I’m updating this blog post to share, and thought it would be a little better if I organized this so it’s more readable, and has better watermarks on the pictures. So here’s the updated math lesson (still no landing page for my poor few math lessons), and I’m adding this into my Homeschool How To series as this is a useful tool to build. Now I return you to past Ticia 2011, though I’ll probably still pop in from time to time with comments.

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Past Ticia 2011’s introduction to the homemade clock

My kids have eagerly been looking forward to learning to tell time.  I told them they had to first learn to count by 5’s, and they’ve mostly mastered that, now we’re moving on to the telling time.

And of course, if you’re going to learn how, you need a clock!

Supplies for homemade practice clock

different colors of fun foam, two circles of different sizes to trace, a brad, a marker, scissors, school glue, and something to punch a hole and a traditional hole punch

Making a practice homemade clock

1.  From your two different colors of fun foam trace the two circles.  And let your kids have at the cutting out of the circles.  While they’re doing that trace two arrows for the clock.  Don’t forget to make one shorter than the other.

Oh, and am I the only one who has wondered why the hour which is longer is much shorter than the minute hand?  I did kind of figure it out when we were working on our clocks, I have a theory.  But, it’s something I’ve always wondered.

2.  Glue the smaller circle on top of the bigger circle, and then punch a hole in it with your nice pointy scissors or a knife.  Do the same for the arrows because your hole punch was broken by some overly excited hole punching by your child…….

Then on the small circle write your hours, this is to have yet another reminder that the hour hand is shorter.  Seriously I struggled with this for years.  And on the larger circle write the minutes by 5’s.  My kids thought this was super cool (I will add I wrote all of the numbers to not aggravate them and make this fun).
As you can tell, the clocks are wildly popular, and we’ve used them everyday since we made them.

Using your brand new practice homemade clock

Hi, Future Ticia 2023 back. Now let’s talk about different ways you can use this homemade clock.

I’m just going to list these out as bullet points, with very simple ideas.

• add a time portion into your morning calendar time
• Work on refining telling time skills. Start off with calling out times to the hour, then progress through half hour, 15 minutes, 5 minutes, and finally to the minute. This can be a fun group thing without having to write a lot for practice.
• Make time flashcards with time written out like a digital clock and then have them match their homemade clocks to the digital clock

What else would you do?

More great math and science ideas

Let me look up and see what other math and science ideas I have for a first-grade level.

• Snack graphing
• Sea shell sort
• Dental health lesson
• Graphing Green Eggs and Ham
• Horseshoe crabs science lesson