It’s safe to say that most young children have a hazy understanding of the progression of time at best. Learning to distinguish the passing of time, and reading time are concepts that require consistent practice in order to sink in. Most children won’t master the art of telling time as a result of a short lesson explaining the technique used to read an analog clock. Rock ‘N Learn’s educational DVD Telling Time combines audio and visual learning in a fun format for children ages six and older to learn to tell time using both analog and digital clocks (basic recognition of numbers 1 to 60 is required for best results).
Computer animated host Timothy Time (an analog clock) and his friend Kuku (from a cuckoo clock), guide children through the largest bulk of the DVD – the parts focusing on telling time on a traditional analog clock face. Timothy introduces children to the concepts needed to tell time successfully in a logical order. Starting with the parts of a clock, he starts with the simplest time-telling tasks – telling time to the hour, telling time to the half hour – and moves on to the more complex tasks – telling time to the quarter hour, telling time to five minutes, and telling time to the exact minute. Plenty of practice is provided both in skip counting by fives, and in time-telling sessions. Because digital clocks are so simple to read, Timothy’s friend Diggy (a rapping digital clock) steps in to teach a brief segment on the straightforward method used to read digital clocks.
In addition to the disc containing a full-fledged course in telling time, a bonus lesson includes a wide variety of information that explains the larger sweep of time. This lesson includes an introduction to calendars, days of the week, months of the year, and the number of days in each month. A visual demonstration the progression from seconds to minutes, minutes to hours, hours to days, and all the way up to a millennium brings the 35-minute DVD to a close.
Some of the animated representations of passing time in “AM and PM” are rather funny – a boy hoisting an entire turkey for his lunch, and a girl chomping on a whole loaf of bread for supper. Those familiar with Rock ‘N Learn’s most recent releases will also find the animation a bit more stilted in this older title than in their newer discs. Educational facts featuring the root words of terms relating to time, sundials, atomic clocks, etc. are included between segments – my daughter loves them and always insists I read them aloud.
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