My son was an early reader. When he began kindergarten he was already reading and he read Treasure Island, the full version, when he was six. Smart kid, to be sure. So you can understand my dilemma when he seemed completely lost in the simple telling of time. I don’t know whether the other little tykes were as confused as mine, but his teacher reported this as an area where he could benefit from some extra help (at home, you know, Mom, get off your duff and teach you child).
So I got the cork board onto which I pinned my cleverly fashioned construction paper clock, movable hands and all. We worked for about thirty minutes on the “get familiar with the 12 X 2 X 60 world of time.” He caught on quickly to my careful explanation of why, when the big hand was pointed at the 1, it was referred to as 5 and when the little hand was point at the 1 it was referred to as 1. He seemed to accept that those cleverly notched marks on the perimeter of my construction paper clock were minutes and that each group of five minutes was punctuated with a number.
We were getting along famously, this little genius and I, until we got to the part about a quarter after the hour or a quarter before the hour. Frustrated, my freckled faced boy looked up at me and demanded to know, “why are you talking about money???? What does this have to do with time??” I laughed my head off when I finally realized my son’s understanding of the word quarter was limited to that which he could spend!
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