My daughter is just starting to learn about the concept of time and telling time.  It’s somewhat frustrating for her and for us as we try to explain what an hour’s worth of time is – or a minute etc.  I tried to explain it as best as I could, but struggled a bit as I suddenly realized that time is harder to understand than I always assumed.  I ended up using simple numbers and counting to try to help her understand what it all means.

I suppose that is what time is a counting up or down from one thing to another – like the ticking of the second hand on chronograph watches as it moves from one number to the next.  I even used a large wall clock to try and show my daughter exactly that, and then expanded the idea to include the big hand and little hand of the clock.

It seemed to work:  My daughter can at least read the time from a wall clock and of course read the numbers on her new digital watch.  That is relatively easy to explain.  It’s the fundamental concept of time that may take a few more years for my daughter to fully grasp.  Which means we’re going to have to endure many more questions like, “Are we there yet?” – Or – “When is it going to be 3 O’clock?”, before she does.