There are lots of opportunities for children to learn about time throughout their day.
Birth to 3 years old
Young children will gradually start to lean about the passage of time. You can draw their attention to it by using words during the day such as, 'we will read a story after breakfast.'
Activities to try at home with your baby
As they get older, they will begin to understand things need to happen in a certain order to work well. Such as 'first we will find the ball then we will throw it for the dog.'
Naming routines will help them to understand the passing of the day as they realise events happen at the same time. Breakfast, lunchtime, teatime, bath time, bedtime.
Sing rhymes with a sequence such as Pat-a-cake, available on the CBeebies website.
3 to 4 years old
Throughout the day you can use more words that relate to the passing of time. Words such as morning, afternoon, evening, night-time, earlier, later, too late, too soon, in a minute.
Activities to try at home with your toddler
Read stories such as The Gingerbread Man. Ask what they think will happen next and can they remember the order of events in the story?
Anticipate when events will happen through the day such as mealtime and visits.
Discuss with children that some things will happen now and some another time such as holidays and birthdays.
Use different timers to measure how long it takes to jump ten times, run round the field, do a jigsaw.
4 to 5 years old
Use words such as, soon, after, before, later.
Activities to try at home with your child
Use pictures to order events showing the passage of time, such a seed growing into a plant, a baby growing up.
Can they predict what happens next in a story?
Read them stories about the past and using pictures can they tell which car / house / clothes / food are from the past and which the present?
Read We’re Going on A Bear Hunt and discuss the sequence of events and time passing.
About a week before, can they count down in sleeps the number of days to an important event. How will they record this?
Can they find the biggest and smallest number on a clock face?
Can they work out a way of finding out which is the fastest push along car and how to record this?
