IT'S ABOUT TIME! (MathStart) by Stuart Murphy

IT'S ABOUT TIME! is part of Stuart Murphy's MathStart series. It covers time by relating the hours of the day to a little boy's activities: waking up, meals, going to school, playing, going home, story time, nap time, bath time, going to bed, etc. [If you are wondering the early morning hours are spent frolicking with some friendly dream-monsters that dance and caper about.]

The book focuses only on the `hour' so it's only for beginning clock-readers. And I guess non-clock readers as well. You see, besides using this book with my 5 year-old daughter, I also read it to my 3 year old son. With him I bypassed the whole how to read a clock aspect of the book and we focused principally on the larger movements of time. How it passes and how we have certain activities that we do at the same time each day.

As to structure, each hour of the day is given a page which demonstrates not only how that hour is spent but both a digital and conventional (analog) representations of the time. The artwork is colorful and sweet and my only real complaint is that I wish they had separated the pictures of the analog clock from that of the digital clock because it makes it hard to `test' whether a child can read the traditional clock. (Let's face it, digital is so much easier.)

As with all of Mr. Murphy's books there are suggestions for how to teach time at the end of the book as well as various practice/exercise ideas.

In addition, in this book, the author has a recommended reading list of three other books about time: Clocks and More Clocks by Pat Hutchins; My First Book of Time by Claire Llewllyn (couldn't find source); and Train Leaves the Station by Eve Merriam.

Pam~


IT'S ABOUT TIME! 
(MathStart)
by Stuart Murphy
John Speirs (Illustrator)

Reading Information:
Word Count: 143
Page Count: 40
Accelerated Reading level: 1.0 / points: 0.5
AR quiz: 86412
--sample pages available



I also found the follow Melissa and Doug Wooden Shape Sorting Clock helpful. (You might have one in the toy box. I used mine first for number recognition, and then for shape sorting.)




updated August 2013