My oldest is not a fan of telling time or working out how much time has elapsed but she loves fractions so when I spotted the About Time Set from Learning Resources which includes a number of time fractions I immediately thought it was worth investigating.
The set comes with 12 different “clock fractions” – a term my kids use to describe the time fraction circles, an activity card which has a clock face with moveable hands on it and an elapsed time number line. (You can write on the elapsed time number line with white board marker pens and they rub off perfectly – the pens are not included in the set but it is definitely handy to have one when you use the set).
As soon as I showed the kids the set they immediately linked the time fraction pieces to their fraction tower set that they have. (The fraction tower set is this one –Learning Resources Fraction Tower Cubes Equivalency Set
My youngest loves the clock fractions. He started off using them to create hour circles sticking with the same time pieces (eg combining all the 1/4 pieces together to get an hour)
but he very quickly moved onto combining different time pieces to create an hour.
Both kids have been drawn to this idea and I have noticed that they keep coming back to the clock pieces wanting to create different combinations for an hour. I really like this. They are naturally exploring what makes up an hour by combining the different fractions, no prompting from me, just them building up circles and noticing how the different pieces fit together and sometimes don’t fit together.
Once the kids had spent some time playing with the time fractions on their own we did sit together and go through a few things. I showed my son how he could match the time fraction pieces to the minute hand on the activity clock. He liked this and he has been playing around with this quite a bit.
My daughter and I moved onto using the clock number line that is included in the set. I started creating stories for her and then she would use the time fractions to see if she could answer me eg If it is now 3 o’clock and it is 3.5 hours before dad gets home what time would he get home ? Or if I drop you off at dance class at 1 and collect you at 3:15 how long is your dance class ? Those type of scenarios.
We did a lot and I must be honest for someone who has always struggles with time I can definitely see her understanding it better and getting more and more confident with her answers. We are going to be using this set A LOT in the future as we work on more complicated time scenarios.
I really like this set. I like the way they have represented time in fractions, I like that the kids can play with the fractions pieces and get comfortable with how different combinations can create an hour. And I really like the idea of the clock number line I do think it is helping my daughter understand time better.
You can get the About Time set directly from the Learning Resources website or from Amazon here – Learning Resources About Time – Telling the Time & Understanding Elapsed Time
Learning Resources did offer to send me a Maths set in exchange for a review. I chose this particular set as I had been eyeing it out for sometime.
ofamily learning together 