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Time, a difficult notion to acquire
The child acquires a conception of space by the very fact that he moves… and thus his perceptions prepare him to admit that the world continues behind the glass. But the notion of time cannot be understood so concretely, and it therefore takes much longer to construct. Because the toddler evolves in an immediate world, of “everything, immediately”, in a series of tables linked to actions, such as taking a bath, eating … It is only around 5 years old that he will start. to understand the notion of time which passes independently of it. But on this subject, more than any other, we must admit great differences from one child to another.
The stages of understanding time
The child begins by taking landmarks during the day; then in the week, then in the year (around 4 years). Then he learns the names of days, months, seasons. Then comes familiarization with the calendar, around 5-6 years old. Then the expression of time, with the words that go with it (“formerly, tomorrow”). Finally, at the age of reason, around 7 years old, the child can be asked to develop and handle an abstract document such as a calendar or a timetable. But it is not uncommon that at 6 years old a child knows how to use a calendar, while another will be unable to recite the days of the week in order.
The weather…
The weather is really the first sensory approach that the toddler experiences with regard to the notion of time: “It’s raining, so I put on my boots, and that’s normal because it is raining. ‘is winter’. However, at 5 years old, many children still have difficulty integrating the seasons. Certain points of reference can help them: autumn is the back-to-school season, apples, mushrooms, grapes… Nothing prevents dedicating a small table to the finds of the season, scrapbooking style: magnetize dead leaves, reproduce their outline, draw a mushroom, paste a photo of the warmly dressed child, a pancake recipe, then renew the table at each change of season. Thus the child constructs the notion of cycles.
Passing time…
This notion is more difficult to develop. We must therefore rely on experience: “This morning, when we left for school, it was still dark”, is a good way to notice that the days get shorter in winter. “In this photo, it’s your grandma, when she was a baby” is an excellent awareness of the passage of time. We can also rely on a table on which we place, every day, a weather symbol (which leads to the formulation that yesterday the weather was fine, and that today it is raining). There are nice ones on the market, in fabric, which in fact take up a well-known ritual activity from kindergarten: be careful not to transform this small activity into a review of what the child is supposed to have learned from his class ritual. … On the other hand, we can safely build an Advent calendar, since the secular school is careful not to insist on the feast of Christmas in its biblical approach (namely the birth of Jesus).
Learn to tell the time
Don’t pressure your child. All these educational devices are built on the long term; you have to accept that the child does not understand and then that it is released suddenly: in CE1, there are those who read the time fluently… and those who still cannot do it in the middle of CE2. But nothing prevents giving a little help with a clock highlighting the differences between hands (the best is to have two colors, because the notion of “smaller” and “less than” is sometimes also under construction) and unambiguous as to the locations of the digits. It can also be an opportunity to bring out the good old cuckoo clock, which has the inestimable interest to make concrete manipulate the passing time, by showing that the weights represent the past hours. Conversely, avoid offering him a digital watch …
Prepare for a difficult moment to live
Toddlers live in the immediate term: no need to warn them days in advance of a distressing event. When the event occurs, providing the child with tools to measure its duration will ease the pain. The sticks ticked on the walls of the prisoner’s cell play exactly that role! We can therefore invest in a wall calendar, and draw the symbols of the highlights of the year: birthdays, holidays, Christmas, Mardi-Gras. Then draw the symbol for the departure and return of the absent adult, and then have the days ticked and counted (from 4-5 years old). Or provide x large wooden beads, corresponding to x days of planned absence, and say to the child: “Every day we will put on a bead and when the necklace is finished, dad will come back” (from 2-3 years old). ). On the other hand, if the absence is made to last more than a few weeks, it is likely that the little one will not be able to conceptualize it, and these tips may run up against this lack of maturity.