Teaching Time

What is a Winter Break? For a four year old, this is something to wonder about. Does winter break and fall into pieces like a glass on the floor? No, but that is a logical thought. Over the holidays, many schools have a Winter Break. A Winter Break is about time; it is not about falling apart. Little children don’t understand about time until they are nearly seven years old. But they need to hear parents and teachers talk about it. Time is complicated because it involves soon and all the time, in a minute. Then there are hours, days, nights, weeks, months, seasons, years…and much more.

Our Clara somehow made sense of Winter Break by comparing it to summer when her school shut down for a time. Winter Break and Summer Break were like each other. She could stay home. She did not go to school for the Break. It is interesting to listen to children try to figure out complex words. They do it differently. Their reasons belong to them. It can take a long time to figure out all the meanings of the word “break.” We need to let them have more time to figure it out.