How Does Waldorf Teach Telling Time?

Waldorf teaches time from the sun to the clock. Before a child reads a clock face, they notice morning, midday and evening, and mark where their shadow falls at different times of day. Then they make a sundial from a stick. Only then do they meet the clock, often through a story in which the hands are brothers, one slow and one quick. Many Waldorf schools teach this in grade 3. Some curricula start in grade 2, and by the end of the block a child can often read an analogue clock to the nearest five minutes.

Start with the day your child already knows

Your child knew time long before anyone showed them a clock. They know the light of morning, feel hungry around lunchtime and grow tired in the evening. Waldorf teachers start there.

Mountain Laurel Waldorf School describes children learning to tell time "first through observation, and then by the clock". The Alliance for Public Waldorf Education, in its grade 3 summary, says the history of the tools is taught imaginatively before modern methods are explained.

So the first morning of a time block is a conversation, not a lesson. What happens in the morning? What happens at night? How do you know when it's evening? Then the words for the parts of the day go into the main lesson book in order: morning, midday, afternoon, evening, night. Some teachers draw them as a circle cut into four, one picture in each quarter.

Shadows and the sundial

Catherine and Peter van Alphen's open-source grade 3 manual, written for Waldorf teacher training in East Africa, tells the story of time from the beginning. Long ago there were no clocks. People lived by the sun, and at night by the moon and stars. Then they noticed the shadows, and planted a stick in the ground to follow them. That stick, they tell the children, was the first clock people made.

At home, this is the part to do outdoors. Plant a stick in a sunny spot, or have your child stand on the same stone, and mark the tip of the shadow with chalk or a pebble in the morning. Come back at midday and it's short and pointing somewhere new. Come back in the afternoon and it's long again, on the other side.

Your child won't see the sun move, because it's too slow. But they'll remember that the morning shadow and the afternoon shadow were in different places. That memory is what the clock face will later stand for.

Curricula differ on how far to take the sundial. Starpath's grade 2 Introduction to Time block has the child build a simple one from a paper plate and a stick, with a lamp as the sun on rainy days. The van Alphens only give the idea of the sundial in grade 3 and save an accurate one, marked with the hours, for grade 4.

A note if you live south of the equator: the sun's path is to the north, so shadows fall the other way. A compass helps you both find it.

Meeting the clock, one hand at a time

The clock comes into the story when towns grew busy and people needed to meet at the same time. The van Alphens describe the town clock in the market square with a single hand and a great bell. Shepherds out in the fields couldn't see it, but they could hear it ring the hours. People said "meet me at two of the clock", which is where "o'clock" comes from.

This is a lovely game at home. You ring the hours ("dong, dong, dong") and your child says what o'clock it is. Then they ring the hour they go to bed.

Next comes a clock with only an hour hand. With one hand, your child learns to say "just after 3", "halfway to 4" or "nearly 4". Meredith of A Waldorf Journey takes the same approach in her grade 3 block. She starts with the hour hand and adds the minute hand, and then the second hand, on later days.

The hands are often characters. In the van Alphens' story they're three brothers. The shortest is slow and careful and never hurries. The longer one works quickly to get things done. The longest and thinnest rushes round and round and never stops. A first grade lesson from Pythabacus uses a lazy ladybug for the hour hand and a greedy grasshopper for the minute hand. Either picture helps a child feel why one hand creeps and the other races.

Minutes, fives and the times tables

Minutes come last, and they lean on the 5 times table. The van Alphens suggest practising the 5s during the rhythmic part of the lesson every day before you reach them. When your child sees each number on the clock face as another 5 minutes, "twenty past" stops being a mystery.

A reasonable goal for the end of a first time block is reading the clock to the hour, half hour, quarter hour and then to the nearest five minutes. The exact minute can come later with practice.

The bigger picture in grade 3

In grade 3, time grows beyond the clock. Meredith's three-week grade 3 block moves through the year, the seasons, the phases of the moon, where the names of the months come from and the qualities of each weekday. She also covers early clocks such as water clocks and candle clocks, and her class made calendars to give as holiday gifts.

The van Alphens add the rhyme "30 days hath September" for the months. They suggest giving each day of the week its own picture and mood. A calendar page for each month, with its season and its festival, can sit in the main lesson book. If you keep the Waldorf festival year, your calendar already has its markers.

For how time fits into the whole grade 2 year, see the grade 2 curriculum guide. The grade 3 curriculum guide puts it beside money, length, weight and volume. If you're wondering whether this pace is enough, Is Waldorf math rigorous enough? looks at the maths across the grades.

Keep the clock in daily life

A time block lasts a few weeks. The Introduction to Time guide linked above runs for 15 days, roughly half with the sun and half with the clock. But the real practice happens in ordinary days afterwards.

Choose 3 moments your child meets every day, such as breakfast, going outside and the bedtime story. At each one, ask what time it is, and let them go and look. If you have a clock with hands in the kitchen, that's where most of the learning will happen. On a sunny afternoon, go back to the shadow stick and ask what the clock says now. Children often enjoy finding that the two still agree.

A week of time at home

1. Monday. Talk about the parts of the day. Draw the circle of the day in the main lesson book.
2. Tuesday. Go outside 3 times: morning, midday and afternoon. Mark the shadow each time.
3. Wednesday. Tell the story of the stick in the ground. Build the sundial if the sun is out.
4. Thursday. Tell the story of the town clock and play the bell game.
5. Friday. Make a card clock with only an hour hand. Read the hours together.

The minute hand can wait until next week. By then, your child will be ready for it.