How to Teach Telling Time the Montessori Way

Lila has been extremely interested in clocks lately and has been asking me to teach her about how to tell time, so these telling time printables came at just the right *time.* [I couldn’t resist!] We’ve been using it all week, and Lila is loving the hands-on materials. I’M loving the fact that rather than purchasing a super expensive Montessori teaching clock, I could just print out the perfect kind for our needs!

Here’s what we’re using:

I’ll share the rest of the Table of Contents for the other parts of the bundle at the bottom of this post so you can see absolutely everything, but I wanted to show you the Table of Contents for the Parts of a Clock portion now so you can get an idea of just how many options there are. I ended up printing the Montessori Clock with Bead Bars, Whole Fraction Symbol, and Hour Numbers and Minute Numbers by 5s in Color for our introduction to telling time, and the Montessori Clock with Bead Bars, Hour Numbers, and Minute Numbers by 5s in Color to use with the Montessori Whole, Half, Quarter and Three Quarter Fraction Circles. I chose the hour hand in black and the minute hand in blue to match the colors of the first clock, and I chose the hour and minute hands in red to match the one I was using with the fraction circles. I laminated all of those materials, poked holes in the center, and connected the hands with brass fasteners. I also printed out a few of the clocks with blanks for Lila to fill in herself.

We happen to have the Montessori bead bars, so I brought them out to use with the clock as they are pictured going around the outside in the clocks I chose to print. This is great for helping with skip counting by 5s, and I love that the clocks also reinforce the Montessori fraction circles.

I love how these printables include so many materials for practicing reading the time whether it’s by the hour, the half hour, the quarter hour, in 5 minute intervals, the minute, or even the second! I probably won’t bring out any of the second materials this year, but I’m glad I have them now so they will be ready when Lila is ready for them. The Roman Numerals, Addition & Subtraction, and Multiplication & Division are also pieces that I will be saving for later. Each of the individual bundles contains multiple different ways of writing the time [ex. 12:00, twelve o’clock, 3:15, three fifteen, quarter after three], but I chose to print the ones that show the digital time because my girls have a digital clock in their bedroom.

One of my favorite parts of the On the Hour Printable Pack is these Daily Schedule Sequencing Cards. It follows a general daily schedule that a child might use and the child must put the cards in order by time from 6:00am until 8:00pm. I love that the photographs feature diverse families!

And these Draw the Hands on the Clock Cards [found in almost all of the printables for a wide variety of times] are definitely going to be a favorite in our homeschool preschool. I laminated them so Lila can draw the hands on the clock using a dry erase marker, then just erase and do them all again!