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As adults, there are many skills we take for granted, but the truth is, we had to learn these skills, through hard work and perseverance. The quintessential example of this, of course, is telling time on an analog clock! As adults, we seldom think of the mental somersaults required to tell time on a traditional clock, but that changes when you have children. Read below to learn how to teach your child to read a clock, and help them get a jump start on their own education and independence.

Is Your Child Old Enough to Tell Time?

As a child's brain develops, their neural connections become better equipped to comprehend concepts, that once were too advanced for them. For example, the idea of object permanence (and the end of fascination with peek-a-boo!) or understanding the reality of dangers and consequences are intellectual growths we acquire with age. The same holds true for telling time.

So, how old should your children be when you teach them about time?

There are a few key ages where you should teach your child about time -- but remember this is an incremental process:

Age 5-6:
Children should be able to read the hour and half hour markers on an analog clock, and draw the corresponding times as well.

Age 6-7:
Children should know the number of minutes in an hour and the number of hours in a day.Children should be able to tell / draw time in five minute increments,
Children should be able to comprehend quarter to / quarter past concepts

Ages 7-8:
Children should be able to read an analog clock, using 12 hour clocks, 24 hour clocks, and Roman Numerals (I-XII).
Children should be able to compare time (by hours, minutes, and even seconds).
Children should be comfortable using time-specific vocabulary (o'clock, a.m./p.m., morning, afternoon, noon and midnight).

Teaching Your Child to Tell Time

Before a child can tell time, they need to understand the basics of what goes into telling time. Follow the below processes to ensure your child has the foundational knowledge to read a clock:

1. Practice Counting to 60: Before they can run, they have to walk. Similarly, before they can tell time, they have to know all their numbers up until 60, comfortably. Help them learn by having them read the numbers from a chart, write them, and recite them from memory.

2. Practice Counting by Fives: Once your child has learned to count to 60, teach them to count to 60 by fives. Your child will have mastered this when they can recite and write from 0-60, from memory.
Check YouTube for some catchy tunes to ease the process.

Introduce Your Child to the Concept of Time: Time, is actually quite a radical process (one that took humans a few thousand years to understand and record).
Start by introducing your child to the concepts of morning, noon, evening, and night time.
Then, ask your child when certain routine activities happen. (i.e. "When do we eat breakfast?" or "What do we do in the morning?").
Once your child can understand these divisions of the day, they're on track to understanding time!

Make a Model Clock Together: Pick up a paper plate, and enthusiastically tell your child "Today we're making our own clocks!" Keep an analog clock next to you, to use for reference. There are many websites available with free lesson plans on how to do this at home.
Be sure to focus on the important markers (12, 3, 6, 9), as well as the Hour Hand and Minute Hand during construction.
Afterwards, try a few simple examples of setting and telling times. To make it fun for your child, take turns with setting and answering (don't be afraid to get a few wrong to show them that it's okay to make mistakes)

Connect Time to Their Daily Routine: As your child continues to learn about time, keep connecting time with their daily routines -- but now go more advanced. For example, ask them what time school ends. Then, ask them to show you the corresponding time on the model clock.
Try doing this a few times every day (with different examples).

Start With the Hour Hand: As the easier of the two hands to grasp, start teaching your child how to use the hour hand of the clock so they can relate each number to an hour of the day.
Model how to read the hour hand a few times ("I see the hour hand is pointing to _, so I know it is _ o'clock!")
Then, as they start to pick it up, ask them to show you certain times on the clock.

Practice With the Minute Hand: The minute hand is more difficult for children to understand. Explain to your kids that since there are 60 minutes in an hour, 1 means 5, and 9 means 45. This can be extremely frustrating for most kids -- who like to think of math as black and white, so please ease them in to this and be patient.
Model how to read the minute hand ("I see the minute hand is pointing to x, so I know it is _:x*5 o'clock!")
If your child is really struggling, just draw the number of minutes around the clock and have them use that as a reference.
Remember, telling time is quite a difficult process and it will take your child some time.

As your child slowly builds confidence with the time-telling process, encourage them and continue to practice with them regularly. If they make mistakes, simply model the correct way to do it and try again.
Remember, all good things do take some time :)

Sources

"Activity: Make A Clock!" [Web]. Retrieved from https://www.education.com/activity/article/clock_first/

Busythings Ltd (2015). "Teaching Children How to Tell the Time: Hints and Tips." [Web]. Retrieved from https://www.busythings.co.uk/blog/teaching-children-how-to-tell-the-time-hints-and-tips/

Palomino, C (2019). "How to Teach Kids to Tell Time." [Web]. Retrieved from https://www.wikihow.com/Teach-Kids-to-Tell-Time

Wikipedia (2020). "History of Timekeeping Devices." [Web]. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_timekeeping_devices#cite_note-bruton-6

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As adults, there are many skills we take for granted, but the truth is, we had to learn these skills, through hard work and perseverance. The quintessential example of this, of course, is telling time on an analog clock!

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As parents, we all want to raise kids who are smart and focused, especially in a world where digital distraction seems to be inescapable. (Even tech titans like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have strategies for limiting their children's screen time.)

Why? Because in the future, there will be two kinds of people in the world: Those who let their attention and lives be controlled and coerced by others and those who proudly call themselves "indistractable."

Becoming indistractable is the most important skill for the 21st century - and it's one that many parents fail to teach their kids. After years of studying the intersection of psychology, technology and how we engage with it, one of the biggest mistakes I see parents making is not empowering their kids with the autonomy to control their own time.

Allowing them to do so is a tremendous gift; even if they fail from time to time, failure is part of the learning process. Parents need to understand that it's okay to put their kids in charge, because it's only when they learn to practice monitoring their own behavior that they learn how to manage their own time and attention.

When my daughter was five and already insisting on "iPad time" with unrelenting protests, my wife and I knew we had to act.

After we all calmed down, we did our best to respect her needs in the way Richard Ryan, one of the most cited researchers in the world on the drivers of human behavior, recommends: We explained, as simply as we could, that too much screen time comes at the expense of other things.

As a kindergartner, she was learning to tell time, so we could explain that there was only so much of it for things she enjoyed. Spending too much time with apps and videos meant less time to play with friends at the park, swim at the community pool, or be with Mom and Dad.

We also explained that the apps and videos on the iPad were made by some very smart people and were intentionally designed to keep her hooked and habitually watching.

It's important that our kids understand the motives of the gaming companies and social networks: While these products sell us fun and connection, they also profit from our time and attention.

This might seem like a lot to teach a five-year-old, but we felt a strong need to equip her with the ability to make decisions about her screen usage and enforce her own rules.

We then asked her how much screen time per day she thought was good for her. We took a risk by giving her the autonomy to make the decision for herself, but it was worth a shot.

Truthfully, I expected her to say, "All day!" But she didn't. Instead, armed with the logic behind why limiting screen time was important and with the freedom to decide in her hands, she sheepishly asked for "two shows." Two episodes of a kid-appropriate program on Netflix is about 45 minutes, I explained.

"Does 45 minutes seem like the right amount of screen time per day for you?" I sincerely asked. She nodded in agreement, and I could tell by the hint of a smile that she felt she had gotten the better end of the deal. As far as I was concerned, 45 minutes was fine with me, as it left plenty of time for other activities.

"How do you plan to make sure you don't watch for more than 45 minutes per day?" I asked. Not wanting to lose the negotiation that she clearly felt she was winning, she proposed using a kitchen timer she could set herself.

"Sounds good," I agreed. "But if Mommy and Daddy notice you're not able to keep the promise you made to yourself and to us, we'll have to revisit this discussion," I said, and she agreed.

Today, as a spirited 10-year-old, my daughter is still in charge of her screen time. She's made some adjustments to her self-imposed guidelines as she's grown, such as trading daily episodes for a weekend movie night. She's also replaced the kitchen timer with other tools; she now calls out to Amazon's Alexa to set a timer to let her know when she's reached her limit.

The important thing is that these are her rules, not ours, and that she's in charge of enforcing them. Best of all, when her time is up, it's not her dad who has to be the bad guy; it's her device telling her she's had enough.

Without realizing it, she entered into an "effort pact," a kind of pre-commitment that involves increasing the amount of effort required to perform an undesirable action.

This type of pre-commitment can help us become indistractable. Many parents want to know if there is a correct amount of time kids should be allowed to spend on their screens, but no such absolute number exists. There are too many factors at play, including the child's specific needs, what the child is doing online and the activities that screen time is replacing.

The most important thing is to involve the child in the conversation and help them set their own rules. When parents impose limits without their kids' input, they are setting them up to be resentful and incentivizing them to cheat the system.

These strategies are no guarantee of parent-child domestic harmony. In fact, we should expect to have heated discussions about the role technology plays in our homes and in our kids' lives, just as many families have fiery debates over giving the car keys to their teens on a Saturday night. Discussions and, at times, respectful disagreements are a sign of a healthy family.

If there's one lesson to take away from this, it's that distraction is a problem like any other. Whether in a large corporation or in a small family, when we discuss our problems openly and in an environment where we feel safe and supported, we can resolve them together.

One thing is for certain: Technology is becoming more pervasive and persuasive. While it's important our kids are aware that products are designed to be highly engaging, we also need to reinforce their belief in their own power to overcome distraction. It's their responsibility - as well as their right - to use their time wisely.
is a graduate and instructor at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. He writes, consults and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology and business. Nir's writing has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Time and Psychology Today. His latest book, "Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life" (published by BenBella Books) is out now.

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Stanford psychology expert: This is the No. 1 skill parents need to teach their kids-but most don't

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As parents, we all want to raise kids who are smart and focused, especially in a world where digital distraction seems to be inescapable. (Even tech titans like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have strategies for limiting their children's screen time.) Why?

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Knowing how to tell time is an important skill. There is a lot of debate over whether children need to learn analog time, especially since mobile phones have taken the place of analog watches for many people. While there may be few instances in which children have to rely on being able to read an analog clock, analog clocks help children understand the passage of time because they have hands that are consistently moving. Analog clocks also show time in multiples of five, which is not as transparent with digital clocks. There are a number of fun games to help children learn how to read both analog and digital time. One of my favorites is Eeboo's Time Telling Game (www.eeboo.com). ThinkFun also has a time-telling version of Zingo that helps children learn to read the hour and minute hands on an analog clock and then make the transition to reading digital time (www.thinkfun.com).

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Is it really important for my child to learn analog time?

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Knowing how to tell time is an important skill. There is a lot of debate over whether children need to learn analog time, especially since mobile phones have taken the place of analog watches for many people.

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On Friday, my colleague Steve Andre wrote in a staff wide email that he was considering teaching how to tell time on an analog clock to his seventh grade computer students because they can't read the one on his wall when they sign out with a pass. On one hand, Steve was for it because analog clocks are still prevalent so it's still a relevant life skill. But he adds that people don't wear analog watches so much, and analog clocks' days are numbered. He wanted our opinions on the matter.

Our opinions, and those of outside friends who have joined the discussion, crossed emotional, pedagogic, and philosophical lines. Emotionally, many were dismayed at the loss of this skill, one was even "appalled." Many teachers were frustrated because the clocks on our classroom walls are analog, so kids need to know analog time. (I wonder why they're not frustrated that our facilities are stuck in the 20th Century or that half of the clocks don't work anyway.) One bridged the emotional - pedagogic divide by expressing the frustration of teaching a skill that first or second graders are not developmentally ready for.

Other pedagogic arguments included the value of using an analog clock as a concrete example of math skills. Miriam added that learning analog clocks helps visual learners:

...I believe that the analog clock can provide a vivid representation of time that digital clocks cannot. Analog clocks are great for teaching time management, concepts including the passage of time, how much time we have left to complete something, etc. Even our little kids who don't yet have the concept of numerals can understand that "when the big hand is on this red line it's time to line up.

Philosophically, several people compared learning analog time to learning cursive writing, another skill that's about as common these days as an 8-track stereo. They pointed out that all anybody seems to write in cursive anymore is their signature. But isn't that a reason to stop teaching it, rather than continue?

Barb, my favorite non-conformist, wrote a response that combines emotion, pedagogy, and philosophy:

I don't know if it's necessary to learn to read an analog clock; but I definitely think it is good for the brain and even better for the mind. Even though the analog clock "moves time" through a single plane or two dimensions, at least time is moving through space at some level. And time needs space although not as much as space needs time. Digital clocks offer only a linear time, and even the linearity is broken up-a kind of dotted line of time. I think our conditioned and cultural tendencies in the west-forever- and increasingly all over the planet, are already towards a mental and psychic linearity( and very much broken up at that ) which lacks depth and scope and a connection to the non-physical world. So, I love the analog clock and the sense of something moving through time and time moving through something....The only thing is that analog watches ALL lose time on my wrist pretty dramatically. But I have a great analog art clock made out of those little firecracker things that you stomp on- hanging in my kitchen. It ticks and tocks, too. I still love sensations and the tactile, visual world-so yes, analog clocks.

That makes me want to teach analog time just so I can then teach them how to find south with an analog watch.

Her comments also led to a mental digression. Our English unit of length began as the average size of sixteen residents' feet in a given village. Daylight was divided into six equal parts so how long an hour lasted depended on the season and your latitude. So, time and distance were proportional the cycles of nature and her human inhabitants. A meter, by the way, is 1/299,792,458 of the distance light travels in a vacuum in one second. (Why not 1/300,000,000?) A second is equal to the duration of 9,192,631,770 cycles of radiation in an energy level change of the Cesium atom. (Why not 10,000,000,000?)

My own response to Steve's original question was that I think reading analog time is about as virtuous as using a rotary phone or zip-a-grade. (I was going to use put in a picture of a zip-a-grade for younger readers, but couldn't find a single one. There are, though, lots of zip-a-grade apps.)

Instead of comparing analog time to cursive, I compared it to reading dice, which a lot of kids can't do anymore, either. But the digital games they play instead:

...are more cognitively demanding and require more planning, collaboration, and communications skills than board games. Plus, like any good teacher - the games they play don't let them move on until they've mastered their current level while providing the motivation to continue. I'd love to be able to teach grit the way World of Warcraft does. My kids never asked me a geography or history question after playing Yahtzee or Monopoly, but they do after playing Assassin's Creed.

To that, my colleague Cheryl fairly pointed out the advantages of dice games in developing number sense.

And to Steve's earlier point about the prevalence of analog clocks in public places, I'd add that yesterday I visited the supermarket, the mall, two libraries, and a party. In those peregrinations, I saw exactly four analog clocks hanging on walls. The last was at my friend's party in her home. Her clock was quite lovely and made me think that in terms of decorative value, analog clocks win hands down.

At the end of the day, Steve wrote to us all that he had decided to teach analog time-telling.

I'm going to pass some time watching Cesium atoms radiate.

I grew up in Silver City, New Mexico and went the University of New Mexico, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Geology. After working for the U.S. Geological Survey in remote regions of western New Mexico, I moved to Tucson to attend graduate school at the University of Arizona, earning a Master of Science degree in Hydrogeology. While working as an intern hydrologist for a local county agency, I started doing volunteer work that involved making presentations in schools. At that moment I knew teaching was the path to follow. It must have been a good decision because I'm still on the path after thirty-two years. My teaching certificates are in math and science and I am a National Board Certified Teacher in Career and Technical Education. After teaching engineering and math and elective classes at the same school in downtown Tucson my whole career, I've moved to a different middle school and district on the edge of town to teach math. In addition to full time teaching, I am actively involved in the teacher leadership movement by facilitating National Board candidates, blogging for Stories from School Arizona, and serving on the Arizona K12 Center's TeacherSolutions team. In January 2017, Raytheon Missile System named me a Leader in Education and I'm a former Arizona Hope Street Fellow.

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Should We Still Teach Analog Clocks? - STORIES FROM SCHOOL AZ

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SHARE THIS STORY: On Friday, my colleague Steve Andre wrote in a staff wide email that he was considering teaching how to tell time on an analog clock to his seventh grade computer students because they can't read the one

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Peter and Maria 3, who don't yet understand the concept of numerals, are told that "When the big hand is on this line, it will be story time."Sam, 7-years-old, is putting a half-eaten sandwich in his lunch bag and asks, "I am done with my lunch, may I go out and play?" The school has a clock on the wall showing the start of lunchtime and beginning of playtime on its face. It would appear that the school designated 30 minutes for lunch before peers can play.
We cannot see it, get rid of it, contain it, or manipulate it. Time - present in our children's lives long before they begin reading letters or numerals, helps challenge all of us to become more organized and prioritize.

One of the questions I am often asked is, "Why do you teach children about analog clocks?" As our societies become more technologically advanced and implement digital clocks, we become conditioned towards mental linearity, which lacks scope and depth. Education Writer for the Washington Post, Valerie Strauss, addressed this topic last month in her article, British schools are replacing analog clocks with digital ones to help clueless students. So, the question remains, why should we continue teaching students to read analog clocks in a digital world? Here is a quick list in support of keeping analog clocks in schools:

Analog Clock Concepts Help Children Understand Time

Hearing the following phrases, "We are eating breakfast in the morning," "Going to bed at night," "It's time to go to softball practice," or, "There is no more time for one more game," gives early understanding of the time present in our lives. After a few months students turn into observant clock watchers.

Digital clocks do not capture this passage of time as well as analog clocks do. Watching the numbers change on the face of the digital clock does not give us the sense or passage of time, when 60 minutes turn to 1 hour. The visual experience of looking at an analog clock and processing the concept of coordinated movement of big and little hands are not shown on a digital clock.

Telling Time on an Analog Clock Develops Skills We Use Later

Specific hand positions on an analog clock equate to a particular time of day. Children learn to match numbers and hours to various times in the day, helping to identify what elapsed time is. This opens the door for several other skills as well as visualization.

The numbers on the face of analog clocks represent two different numbers simultaneously (for example, the number 12 represents itself and represents 60 minutes) - imaginative and roleplaying elements can be applied here to make learning fun: each number have a secret identify: the number 4 is 20, the number 7 is 35, and that identity is only revealed when the big hand is on the number - a game children will later remember when learning algebra. Each algebraic variable is a double agent in an "overcoat," the real identity comes out when you solve the equation. Creating a double layer paper plate clock and the two hands and plates put together with a paper fastener are creative projects we have been to show this concept.

Analog clocks also open the door to learning quarters, halves, days, weeks, etc. Converting the concept of a quarter, to a half hour, to 30 minutes is mental exercise that digital numbers may not provide to young learners.

As stated by The Guardian, "Reading an analog clock is a cognitive workout, requiring attribution of different values to the same 12 symbols, interpreted on three parallel planes - seconds, minutes, hours. Only with practice does this awesome mental feat come to feel easy."

Analog Clocks Can Help Us Think Musically

The ticking of an analog clock not only represents the passage of time, but also sets the speed for the passage of music, which is referred to as the tempo. Students who understand the tempo (or beats per minute), can then learn complex rhythm. Music combined with movement leads to dancing, encouraging the synchronization of moves with the tempos as they change from song to song.

Time is Related to Earth's Position in Space

The clockwise -counter clockwise movement brings up the question, "Why do clocks move left to right, the clockwise direction?" The explanation comes from the motion of the Earth relative to the Sun. Before mechanical clocks, it was observed that the Sun was highest in the sky at noon. Mechanical clocks used on the Northern Hemisphere were designed to follow the Sun's motion from left to right, the clockwise direction. All simple machines manuals reference this "clockwise rotation," and the motion is also used in subjects that include trigonometry and electricity.

While digital technology is practical and present, analog clocks provide us with a lot more than just what time it is. By continuing to educate children on how to read these clocks, they will develop valuable life skills as well as better understand our place in the universe.

Eva Szillery is a mathematician, received her Ph.D. in Mathematics at the Eotvos Lorand University in Hungary, she taught college courses in mathematics for engineering students. In 1998, Szillery began working with Professor Seymour Papert, a 40-year MIT Professor and Special Adviser for the Governor's Maine Technology Initiative. Szillery was hired to design the problem-solving component of the Maine Technology Initiative and with this "develop a generation of thinkers through problem-solving." In 2002, stemming from a suggestion made by Papert, she founded the MMSETS Program, a correspondence problem-solving program, and various outreach enrichment programs which include: modular origami, teacher in-service programs, and even programs for very young children and their parents. The program has been running successfully since 2002.

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The New "Cursive Debate," Should Children Still Learn to Read Analog Clocks?

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Peter and Maria 3, who don't yet understand the concept of numerals, are told that "When the big hand is on this line, it will be story time." Sam, 7-years-old, is putting a half-eaten sandwich in his lunch bag and asks, "I am done with my lunch, may I go out and play?"

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Knowing how to tell time is a very important skill. It can help you determine whether you're running late or whether you have plenty of time to spare. It can help you catch a train, bus, or plane on time, and allows you to know if you're going to make it to an important get-together early or late. Being able to tell time by looking at a traditional clock is essential to understanding other things like time zones and international times as well. Learning how to tell time can also help kids with their motor and cognitive skills as well as mathematical skills.

Many educators feel that the earlier the age of the child, the better. In most cases, children should learn to tell time on an analog clock around the age of five or six. Younger children will have difficulty since they have not yet learned basic math skills just yet.

1. How to Read a Clock with Hands - A simple guide that shows how to read clocks with hand, also known as analog clocks.

2. Time Monsters - This interactive website teaches kids how to learn about time and clocks.

3. Clock Quiz - Use this quiz to help kids learn how to read a clock and tell time.

4. Teaching Kids to Read a Clock - Some helpful information and tips on teaching kids to read a clock.

5. Video - This entertaining video teaches children how to read clocks to the nearest 5-minute mark and understand time intervals.

6. Analog Clock - An interactive clock that shows the time as well as where the hands are coordinating.

7. Clock Challenge - Click on these clocks to see if you're able to tell what time it is.

8. Lesson Plan - Some challenges and lesson plans for teaching kids how to tell time.

9. What Time is It? - Another fun interactive game where you can match up your analog time telling skills with the digital clocks under it.

10. Telling Time with Kat - This fun game with Kat the cat helps kids learn to tell time on an analog clock.

11. Learn to Tell Time Game - An online, interactive game that helps kids learn to tell time.

12. Teaching Clock - A helpful clock that will show children how to tell time on an analog clock.

13. Play to Learn - Enter the desired time, and it will show on the clock's hands.

14. Identifying Time - A great interactive tool that helps kids understand the time on a clock.

15. Mastering Time Concepts - This article addresses children with ADHD and how parents can help them understand time and time management.

16. Printable Clock - Use this printable clock as a tool to help children learn to tell time.

17. Learning to Tell Time - Information about software designed to teach kids how to tell time.

18. Analog & Digital Clocks - Online software that shows kids how to tell time on both analog and digital clocks.

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Knowing how to tell time is a very important skill. It can help you determine whether you're running late or whether you have plenty of time to spare. It can help you catch a train, bus, or plane on time, and allows you to know if you're going to make it to an important get-together early or late.

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Now, let's talk about acknowledging the misconceptions. Again, I referenced one of them which is the whole idea of the whole not being 100. So many times kids think of the whole being 100. When they're telling time, they want to think about it as flipping over to the next hour after one hundred minutes, but it's really at 60. Which then adjusts at what our quarter and our half is.

The other misconception is the whole idea of knowing what hour it is when we get past the halfway point because our clocks try to lie to us.

Here's a little picture that I took of my watch with Mickey lying to me.

So, on Mickey here, a lot of kids might know that it's 48 minutes. They'll get to where they can say, "Okay, I bet that that's about 48 minutes," even though the minute ticks aren't really in there. So, they're having to estimate a little bit. They might say, "It's 48 minutes." But the problem is, they'll get the hour wrong. They will say, "11:48" because the hour hand is closer to the 11 than it is to the 10. So, this is really a stumbling block for a lot of our students.

Really acknowledge that. Be sure that you are giving them analog times that reference that. If you don't have a great analog clock, that the hour hand moves in proportion to your minutes, you have to pay really close attention. If you've got worksheets or stuff, a lot of times, they won't move the hour hand to where it should be. So, it'll have the hour hand right at the 10 but the minute hand is where Mickey's minute hand is and that's not what it looks like in real life.

You've got to make sure any manipulatives, any visuals that you are using really does acknowledge the fact that on real clocks, as you're getting closer to that next hour, the hour hand is moving proportionately closer to that next hour. And the clock will try to lie to us.

That's kind of the way I talk about it with the kids. Like, "It's lying to us right now. Can we figure out the lie that the clock is telling us?"

I really hope that this has given you some ideas of ways to make telling time on an analog clock more concrete, more visual, more conceptual for your students so that we can help build their math minds when it comes to telling time.

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Teaching Kids to Tell Time Using An Analog Clock

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Now, let's talk about acknowledging the misconceptions. Again, I referenced one of them which is the whole idea of the whole not being 100. So many times kids think of the whole being 100. When they're telling time, they want to think about it as flipping over to the next hour after one hundred minutes, but it's really at 60.

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Can your kids read an analog clock? You know, the round ones with hands. Like the Rocket Clock in Play School (as opposed to the digital watches that were soooo cool in Back to the Future).

Learning to tell the time on an analog clock is HARD and, pardon the pun, it is a skill that takes time to master.

Some people think that kids are increasingly unable to read analog clocks. I haven't been able to find hard evidence to support this claim but, from anecdotal evidence, it is certainly true that some kids are reach their teenage years without developing this skill, despite digital and analog time telling featuring equally on our school curriculums.

It is unsurprising - digital clocks are far more common, especially for "i-Gen" kids brought up with screens. Yet there are still enough analog clocks around - in people's homes, on town halls and on people's wrists - to make it an important skill to learn.

So how does a kid learn to read a clock with hands?

Sonja Walker is a teacher with 30 years' experience. She points out that the most important thing is to have regular exposure. "I suggest having analog clocks around your house, and buying your primary schooler an analog watch," she says.

She also suggests consciously using the lingo associated with time. "Use a timer when you are encouraging your kids to take turns, or say things like: 'We need to pick up Sarah from soccer at 5pm so let's look at the clock to see what time it is now.'"

Play School has the right idea by starting with hour and half-hour times, something that is echoed in the early years of our school curriculums. "After that, you need to know patterns of five," says Walker.

This is where analog clocks get super confusing. Roger Shackleton, who realised just how confusing when he tried to teach his daughter, sums it up beautifully: "When the minute hand points to one, we need to say five; when it points to five we need to say 25; when it points to seven we also need to say 25; when it points to 10 we do actually say 10."

Shackleton realised that there must be an easier way. He hand-crafted a clock that contained more information than regular analog clocks. "It was made of cardboard and had Mickey Mouse hands," he says.

He added numbers to correspond to the minutes and lengthened the minute hand so that it pointed right to the numbers. He then added the words PAST to one half, TO to the other, and a bit of colour coding for good measure.

"Now all the information needed was on the clock," he concludes.

From there, it becomes a simple three step process to tell the time. "All a child has to do is read the number the long hand is pointing to, say whether it is on the 'past' or 'to' side of the clock, then read the number that the short hand is pointing to," Shackleton says.

The idea was so successful that, after his daughters had totally mastered telling the time, Shackleton created a commercial version of his cardboard clock. I used one with my kids so totally agree with Shackleton when he says: "Telling the time had gone from being inexplicable, to three simple steps that can be learned in just a few minutes."

Of course, there is a bit more to it than that. There is learning the concepts of quarter past, quarter to, and knowing that half past four is the same things as four 30. Then there is working out how much time is left before something happens by subtracting using 60 as the base number rather than 100. And, for extra degrees of difficulty, there are roman numerals and the 24-hour clock to master.

But, once the fundamentals are in place, these more complex elements are easier.

Like all skills, learning to read a clock will come more naturally to some kids than others. Walker, who now runs a multidisciplinary service for kids facing challenges with their learning, says: "For some kids, the whole concept of time is hard, it is abstract and some kids will likely always have gaps in their skills."

Like all skills, reading an analog clock will be developed more quickly and fully when they are learned both at school and at home.

If you need some add some humour into the equation, hit YouTube for these hilarious takes on the topic.

An analog clock-reading Vox Pop by Jimmy Kimmel:

An oldie-but-a-goodie - veteran comic Dave Allen routine on the challenges of teaching your child how to tell the time:

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Do kids really need to know how to read an analog clock?

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Can your kids read an analog clock? You know, the round ones with hands. Like the Rocket Clock in Play School (as opposed to the digital watches that were soooo cool in Back to the Future). Learning to tell the time on an analog clock is HARD and, pardon the pun, it is a skill that takes time to master.