TIME DISPLAY TABLE
You can begin a discussion with your children about time by first setting up a display table with various types of instruments, that children are familiar with, that we use to tell time.  Suggested items:

• Analog clocks (with face and hands)
• Digital clocks
• Wrist watches
• Egg timers
• Pocket watches
  

BEFORE CLOCKS
Discuss with your children ways that people used to tell time before the clock was invented.

• Position of the sun and sundials
• Hour glass
• Candle clocks

 
MAKING AN HOUR GLASS
Show your children how to make a simple hour glass.

• Collect two baby food jars with lids.
• Use a hot glue gun to glue the lids together, tops facing each other.
• Use a nail and hammer to punch several large holes in the lids.
• Screw the baby food jars onto the lids, filling one jar partway with sand first.
• Tip the jars over to watch the sand trickle down.
  

MAKING A CANDLE CLOCK
Here is a simple way to make a candle clock

• Place two identical candles in candle holders.
• Burn one candle for 10 minutes, then measure the difference in height between the two candles.
• This length now represents 10 minutes.
• Make marks on each candle at this 10 minute interval.
• Light one of the candles and you will know that 10 minutes has passed, each time the candle passes one of the minute lines.

Caution:  Be sure to supervise your children at all times around burning candles.

 
MAKING A SUNDIAL
Look for a sunny day to make a paper plate sundial.

• Take a paper plate outside and punch a pencil down through the center, into the ground.
• Watch a regular clock and go out to the plate every hour to mark where the shadow falls.
• If it is one o’clock, mark the shadow line with a “1”, and so on for each hour.
• Leave the plate in the same spot, and the next day you will not need a regular clock to tell the time.
• You will be able to tell the time by noticing where the pencils’ shadow falls.
   

HOW PEOPLE WERE REMINED ABOUT TIME BEFORE CLOCKS WERE INVENTED

• When it was time to get up or go to work, the Chinese used to pound drums from high towers.
• When it was time to go to bed, some cultures would send someone through the streets ringing a bell.
• When the sun comes up, the rooster is always ready to tell us it is time to get up.

HICKORY DICKORY DOCK
Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one, and down it ran.
Hickory Dickory Dock.
 

A CLOCK
A clock has a face, did you know?
It can’t see, but it can go.
It can’t talk, but it can chime.
All day long, it tells the time.
                                Jean Warren