Interactive Digital Flip Clocks for Children

I made a digital flip clock freebie that you can grab at the end of this post.  Your students will have a blast with them!  These interactive clocks can be used at the beginning of your telling time unit to spark student interest.

Children can pull the hours dial or the minutes dial to change the time.  They're reminiscent of the seventies style digital clocks making this a "Retro-Resource".   Ha!  Ha!

  

Here are three ideas for using them:

1.  Say a time and have students reproduce the time with their clocks.
2.  Show a time on an analog clock and have students create the matching time on their digital clock.
3.  Have students use them to solve time elapsed story problems.


Here's a VIDEO demonstration of how to assemble the retro flip clocks.

Or read the written directions here:

Print the desired clock on card-stock paper.  Allow the children to decorate the frames of their clocks with crayons or markers to personalize them.  (This is the only part that young children can complete on their own.)  Collect the colored clock pages.  Cut the pieces out.  Make slits on the broken lines of the clock.  Tape the two strips that are for the hours together where indicated.  Tape the minutes strip where indicated.  Push the strips into the appropriate slits on the clocks.  Loop the strips and tape together.

Click on the image shown below to get the freebie!  Leave a comment on this post to let me know how your clocks turned out! 

The Common Core State Standards require first graders to learn time to the hours and half hours.  I created two additional clocks for hours and half hours with the minutes fixed (not moveable) so the focus would be on moving time to the hours exclusively.  You can see those on the yellow and orange clocks in the photo above with the times set at 5:30 and 3:00 respectively.  Some first graders don't know their own strength!  They'll accidentally rip their clocks when flipping the times.  Keep a few extra clocks on hand in case that happens.

My next post, I'll share some practical ways to probe children to determine their current ability to interpret the time on a clock.  I'm also planning to share how teaching time can be broken down into small pieces.  I was planning to do that in this post but will postpone until next time. 

That's it for now!

Molly