Teaching kids about time: how a sense of time grows

How children’s sense of time develops

“Are we there yet?” Every parent hears it on every car ride. It isn’t impatience for its own sake. For kids, time is very abstract: you can’t touch it, see it or count it like building blocks.

Researchers have looked at when children understand words like “yesterday” and “tomorrow.” Kids often say them by age two or three. In one line of research, an adult-like grasp of the fact that “yesterday” is in the past and “tomorrow” is in the future, and in what order things happen, came together between ages four and six. Understanding how far away something is, that “last week” was much longer ago than “yesterday,” came later, after age seven (Tillman et al. 2017).

A newer project compared English- and German-speaking children ages three to seven and found a similar picture: children learn time words gradually, piece by piece. Interestingly, German-speaking kids understood “yesterday” precisely more often than English-speaking kids. German has single words for “the day before yesterday” and “the day after tomorrow,” and the researchers suggest that a richer set of time words may help children place them (Steele et al. 2025).

This research shows when children understand these words. It uses small tasks, like placing stickers on a timeline. It doesn’t tell you the fastest way to teach time. In everyday life, that mostly means patience, and showing time where words don’t reach yet.

Why “five minutes” means little to a four-year-old

You say “We’re leaving in five minutes,” and a minute later your child asks: “Now?” It isn’t that they weren’t listening. Children use words like “minute” and “hour” early but take years to learn how long each one is. In one project, preschoolers often knew that an hour is longer than a minute, but had little idea how long a minute actually lasts (Tillman & Barner 2015).

For many kids, a real sense of these durations only came after they had learned the exact definitions, like a minute having sixty seconds. To a four-year-old, “five minutes” is a word without content. And to be honest, grown-up “five minutes” are often closer to fifteen.

What kids do understand well is anything they can see or count:

• “Two more times down the slide” instead of “five more minutes.”
• “When the song is over” instead of “in a bit.”
• “After lunch” instead of “at one o’clock.”
• “When the sand runs out” instead of “in three minutes.”

Make time visible: sand timers, visual timers and light

The simplest answer to “How much longer?” is one your child can read for themselves. A few simple tools do exactly that.

• Sand timer: the sand runs down where everyone can see it, no numbers needed. A small sand timer for brushing teeth by the sink is a classic. Bigger ones run ten minutes, for example for cleanup.
• Visual timer: a colored area shrinks until time is up. At a glance, your child sees whether a lot or a little is left. Some also switch colors like a traffic light.
• Toddler clock with a light: it glows green, for example, when it’s okay to get up. On weekend mornings, your child doesn’t have to guess whether it’s late enough.
• Music: a song has a beginning and an end. “We clean up until the song is over” is a stretch of time every child knows.

Analog or digital matters less than the shape. Your child can read a shrinking area without knowing numbers. Digits counting down only work once they can read numbers. In the Teselora App, for example, the timer is a calm ring that gets smaller until time is up.

Start with short times, two or three minutes, and with moments when the end brings something good: “When the ring is gone, the pasta is ready.” That way your child first links the timer with something nice, not just with the signal that fun is over.

Teaching kids about time with everyday words

Kids learn time words by hearing them often, in sentences that fit their own day. You don’t need to explain anything. It’s enough to use the words on purpose, again and again.

• At dinner: “What was fun today? What are we doing tomorrow?”
• Getting dressed: “Yesterday you wore the red pants, today the blue ones.”
• With anchors in the day: “After lunch we’re going to grandma’s.” “Before dinner we clean up.”
• With days of the week: “Today is Tuesday, and Tuesday is swim day.”

Meals make good anchors. In one project, four-year-olds could put breakfast, lunch and dinner in order on a line with a little prompting. Most kids only started thinking of time as a line on their own in the early school years (Tillman et al. 2018). A strip with three pictures for breakfast, lunch and dinner makes that order visible.

For younger kids, parts of the day are easier to grasp than clock times. Morning, afternoon and evening work better than 8:00, 3:30 and 7:00.

Use a timer to announce transitions

From the playground to home, from playing to the table, from the bath to bed: transitions are the moments when time suddenly matters. A heads-up and a timer turn them into something your child can see coming.

1. Announce it with something countable: “Three more swings, then we head home.”
2. Set the timer together and take a quick look at it. Your child can start it themselves.
3. When time is up, point to the timer instead of negotiating again. The timer called time, not you.
4. Say what comes next: “Now we go home, and there are apple slices waiting.”

A countdown from ten to zero, called out loud, can easily sound like a threat. A timer you set together is an agreement. Both count backward, but only one feels like something you do together.

Make waiting visible: how many sleeps?

The further away something is, the harder it is for kids to place. “Your birthday is in three weeks” is about as concrete to a preschooler as “someday.” Counting in sleeps is easier to grasp, because each night is something your child lives through.

• An Advent calendar shows how it works: one door a day, and the doors left show how long until Christmas.
• A paper chain: one loop for every night until the birthday. Each evening, your child tears one off.
• A picture calendar for the week: the day you visit grandma gets a drawing, every day that’s over gets an X.
• Small time spans first: for the youngest, a week is often far enough ahead. Things further away can be announced later.

Language helps here too. A four-year-old understands “two more sleeps.” “The day after tomorrow” comes with time. Use both side by side.

Learning to tell time comes later

A clock measures time, but it doesn’t explain how long time is. That’s why it usually comes after the other steps. In schools that follow the Common Core standards, first graders learn to tell time in hours and half-hours on analog and digital clocks (Common Core, Grade 1). In second grade, they read clocks to the nearest five minutes and use a.m. and p.m. (Common Core, Grade 2).

Before that, you can lay the groundwork at home, without pressure:

• A toy clock with movable hands to set full hours: “When the short hand is on the six, we eat.”
• Colored sections on a real clock, like a green slice for afternoon playtime.
• Analog hands first, digital numbers later. On a clock face you can see time passing. On digits you can’t.

Being able to read a clock doesn’t mean your child has a solid feel for half an hour. That feel keeps developing through the elementary school years. Until then, timers, “two more sleeps” and talking about yesterday and tomorrow stay handy companions in everyday life.

Frequently asked questions

Further reading

• Routines for kids: simple steps with one picture each