Focus this week: Time in Year 1 A fun activity for Year 1 children, drawing the clocks to match the times shown on the clock faces eg draw a tractor round the clock which shows half past one. Go to Time in Year 1 For Year 1 children (aged 5/6) there is a great deal to understand about time, far more than just being able to read a clock face. To begin with children will need to develop a good understanding of how to order events in time, using the vocabulary related to time. Much of this is to do with knowing the language of time and being able to sequence events in chronological order using terms such as: before and after, now, soon, early, late and next. Other terms will also need to be understood, such as always, never, often, sometimes and usually, as well as comparatives such as faster and slower. This will require a lot of oral work, encouraging children talk about their day and when things happened. Periods of time also need to be understood such as: morning, afternoon, evening, night, midday, midnight, weekend, yesterday and tomorrow. Asking children when certain activities happen e.g. when do we eat breakfast, when do we come home from school, what day will it be tomorrow etc. all helps with this. Further vocabulary that children will need to know by the end of the year includes: the order of the days of the week the order of the months of the year the seasons of the year knowing that one week equals 7 days and knowing that one day equals 24 hours Perhaps the key outcome in Year 1 is to learn to tell the time to the hour and to the half hour on an analogue clock. Plenty of practical work is needed here and one of the best resources is a large clock face where the hands can be moved round to show different times. The analogue clock face is also a great way to show time moving. However, it is important to remember that most of the clocks children have access to today use digital time and they will be familiar with half past nine as being shown as 09:30, which can be read as nine thirty or thirty minutes past nine. Children should also be gaining an understanding about how long periods of time are. What can they do in a given time, measured in seconds or minutes or hours? We have plenty of worksheets for helping with all the above including telling the time to the hour and half hour, as well as pages on days of the week and months of the year. One of my favourite pages is the ‘One minute’ page, which sets various tasks taking one minute each. Learning to tell the time should be fun so why not try a little art work as well, with our drawing round the correct clock faces pages! Go to Time in Year 1