Developing a Sense of Time in Young Kids

Timeline of her life so far

I've observed so many instances of young kids being confused in regard to time:

~ When my son was younger, he never knew when he woke up whether it was morning or after nap. 

~ My daughter, for the longest time, constantly mixed up the words tomorrow and yesterday; morning and afternoon; breakfast, lunch, and dinner.   

~ In many conversations with my first-grade students, they seemed unclear about when their stories from their lives had happened. Some events, like a big family trip or their last birthday, stood out, but otherwise time was an abstract, and they often had trouble sequencing and remembering, much less describing coherently. 

~ Currently M loves babies-- her doll babies, real babies, and hearing stories of when she was a baby. But babies aren't just an interest; it's like she's on a quest to understand. Frequently she'll ask a question about how she ate/slept/talked as a baby or she'll crawl around the house pretending she was "just born today." I have realized her sense of babyhood is black and white without gradations. She knows only that once she was a baby, and now she is big. 

Most young kids can't tell time on a clock, but their sense of time is also developing on a larger scale-- lack of clarity about when events happened in the past or will happen in the future, imagining all babies as crawlers who use baby talk, not recalling or understanding their own growth and development, not having an internal sense of what time of day it is or how long it takes to do things. This developing sense of time seems to be part of the package with young kids, even if they show it in different ways. I've been thinking about this idea more and more this year, spending a lot of time with a kindergartner as I do. So I thought I'd share some strategies (and a few particular activities) that I think have helped a bit.   

Calendar 

In our homeschool we don't do calendar time. (I did traditional calendar activities in the classroom for years. While it helped with rote memorization (days of the week, months of the year, counting) and was a good way to build in a lot of other math skills, I never felt it was very useful in helping kids develop a real sense of time.) But having a calendar on the wall as a visual is useful, each day in its own box. I try to write down the things of relevance to the kids on it-- appointments, birthdays, sports, family visits-- and we try to point out what day it is and talk about what is coming up. My son was ten before he had the order of the months memorized, so in trying to prevent that for M, we do sing the days of the week and say the months in order now and then. But just like the difference in math between being able to rote count vs. actually having a sense of numbers and quantities, I want her to not just be able to sing the days and months, but also to have a sense of where we are in the week or the year. We talk about each month and the types of happenings associated with it to help give it meaning and its own identity-- May, for example, being Mothers' Day and her grandfather's birthday and baseball and working in the garden and those little white wildflowers that bloom each year in our yard...  

Daily Schedule

I write out a basic schedule each day of the things we will do. I don't put time of day on it because we aren't that specific about it, but it is a list that shows the basic plan and order of school subjects and other activities. (M beelines to it every morning, full of comments and questions, and it has absolutely helped her with learning to read this year.) Some kids and some people in general need/appreciate schedules and routines more than others. My kids have both made it very clear to me that they like having this daily list and knowing what's to come. W often asks me to put things he wants to remember to do on it. M even asks us sometimes to write the schedule on the weekend-- and while we don't usually have as clear an agenda on a Saturday or Sunday, we honor her request by writing down any plans or hopes for the day in this same central place.  

Talk, Talk, Talk 

Both my kids benefit from the preparation of talking about an event before it happens-- what time of day we will need to leave, who will be there, what we'll do there. Talking with kids about things past, present, and future as well as taking the time to explain things and answer their questions honestly is probably the most important thing on this list. Recently, M asked me, "Did I draw like this when I was a baby?" and did a curly scribble on a paper. I told her that when she was first born she couldn't pick anything up so she wouldn't have made any marks with a crayon. The conversation grew from there and she was fascinated, asking about different ages and trying to recreate examples as I described the colorful scribbles she'd made at two, the people with just a head and legs she'd drawn at four, and the detailed expressive pictures she makes now. We've had a similar conversation regarding different stages of other abilities as well-- eating, walking, bike riding-- and she always seems to eagerly soak it up, like an anthropologist studying her own past.   

Photo Albums

Whenever M asks to look at a family photo album with us at bedtime rather than just reading a book, it takes a lot longer because she discusses every picture and asks so many questions. But she is earnestly studying photos of the past and trying to mentally put things together, and these conversations are so important for her. (Also, since she constantly wants to hear baby stories about herself, the photos help us remember specific anecdotes to tell.) A couple of times this year, I have also gotten out some much older photos-- from before our kids were born and even from our own childhoods. We had all sorts of conversations about those photos, too. I think older photo albums of people in her life help to provide a rare visual of how people grow and change (since in the short lifetime of a young kid, grown-ups are always grown-ups and kids are always kids), and also to help develop a bigger sense of past and present.   

Artifacts from her Own Life

While some of M's memories (and those of other young kids I've known) are so vivid and specific, I am always amazed at how little she remembers of other times from her life. She told me the other day she couldn't remember what her preschool looked like-- and her memories of daycare when she was two and three, at least that she can relate to us, are even more vague. (The daycare before that, up until she was two, seems not a part of her memory at all.) But I guess in the span of her life, even a year ago is a long time and what is current is much more real. One thing we've done is to save and/or display the things that were important to her at different ages-- the photo album her daycare provider gave to her on her last day, preschool artwork, her first practice chart documenting 100 days of practicing the violin, her own writing pieces from earlier this year. It's nice to look through these artifacts from time to time and talk about them. While they may not cause her to remember those times of her life fully, they are physical evidence of her growth over time, and maybe help fill in some gaps so she can connect the dots of the story of her life so far.

Compare Lengths of Time to Known Quantities

Time is tricky and even if I spoke in specific minutes and referred to the time on the clock all the time, I don't think it would sink in till she was a bit older. Often when I say we'll do something "in five minutes" or some other length of time, M will ask me, "How long is that?" because she really doesn't know. (This may also explain why telling her we need to leave in one minute doesn't seem to have any effect in causing her to move any faster.) When saying a length of time, I try to think of something she has a good sense of to compare it to. If something is two hours, it's the length of a drive to visit grandparents; if it is twenty minutes we compare it to the length of an episode of Daniel Tiger; two minutes is the length of time to brush your teeth. After hearing an analogy like this, she nods and I see a sense of understanding.

Projects about her Own Growth and Stages 

The two fun projects below are things I incorporated into M's homeschool day over recent months.

Making Books: 

We read a few stories that had a theme of growing and memories of the past. One good one was Birthday Presents, by Cynthia Rylant, which tells the story of a young child's growth through her parents' descriptions of her birthday celebrations each year. Another was When I was Little, by Jamie Lee Curtis, which follows a basic pattern of "When I was little..." on one page followed by "Now..." on the next page. 

Both of these books were written in a patterned format, and I had M borrow the patterns from them to write about her own life. She especially seems to treasure the book she created about her birthdays. I printed out a few photos from the day she was born and from each birthday since for her to choose from, then cut and arrange on a page and use to spark her writing and memories. We spent quite a while making it and discussing all the photos. (It was fun to let her play around with some of the photos before putting them in the book and try to put pictures of herself in age order, too.) The other book she made is equally sweet, with lines like, "When I was little I crawled. Now I can walk and dance." She chose the topics about which she wanted to compare then vs. now and they were things like making music, skiing, and the length of her hair. 

"When I was born I was too too too cute! I had a bath in the sink..."

"When I turned 1 I stayed home from daycare. I had a pink and white raspberry cake."

"When I was little my hair was teensy."

 

"Now my hair is long."

Timeline of her Life so Far: 

This past winter I tore some paper off her art easel and I laid it out across the floor. I drew a long line and helped mark out sections, and label each mark with her ages in years. I had M name some important things that had happened in her life so far, and then I told her where to put them on the line. It was neat to hear her observations while making it. It makes a cute thing to display in her room, and hopefully helps her understand her past. 

No doubt M will develop a more mature sense of time on her own, one way or another, as all kids do eventually. But she has such an interest in her past right now, so we've had fun capitalizing on that with some of these activities and conversations over the last several months.