Thinking about time in the early years

When we think of 'time' we often think about telling the time but this is only one aspect of the four key components important for a deep understanding of this complex concept (Thomas et al. 2023).

These key components include:

• Awareness of time

• Succession

• Duration

• Measurement of Time. 

Having an awareness of time is foundational and very present in a child's early years. An awareness of time involves understanding that an occurrence or period of time can be used as reference.

Assisting children to develop an awareness of time can relate to everyday occurrences and routines, and discussions about them. This would include using specific and well understood terms like yesterday and tomorrow, as we are using today as the reference for when something is happening/has happened. For example:

• Yesterday we went to the zoo. 

• Today we are going to kindy. 

• Tomorrow you will go to the shops with grandma.

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It can also include informal phrases that indicate time like soon or not long. 

For example:

• We are leaving soon, make sure you have your raincoat.

• It is nearly night time time so it's not long until we need to get ready for bed.

As suggested in some of the examples, an awareness of time includes regularly occurring temporal patterns like daily and weekly routines. It can also include months of the year (Thomas et al, 2023).

Interestingly, awareness of time also incorporates psychological time (Friedman, 1978). This relates to an individual's perception of time and the suggestion that something might seem to take a short or long amount of time depending on the context.

For example, 15 minutes may seem a long time if a child is waiting excitedly for something they are looking forward, or it may go quickly if they are having fun playing. The time (15 minutes) hasn't changed, just the perception of it has. If this is the case, it is interesting to raise an awareness of this perception through comments and questions like:

• We waited 15 minutes for our turn. Did that seem to take a long time?

• You were playing for 15 minutes, did that time seem to go quickly?

Asking children to reason about why the time seemed to go slowly or quickly would be interesting. 

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An awareness of time is embedded in the other key components.

Succession

Succession relates to the ordering of two or more events. These events may happen at the same time or occur before or after each other. It involves the present, the past and the future (Thomas, et al., 2023). 

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For young children succession may involve linking times of the day or night with specific events. For example, in the morning they have a bath then get dressed. Or it might be that events occur at the same time, i.e. they go to kindy at the same time that their siblings go to school.

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To assist an early understanding of succession in our discussions with young children, we include words associated with order, i.e. first, next, before, after, again (repeat).

For example: 

• First you are going to hang up your bag, then you can go and play.

• Before we eat we need to wash our hands. After we have finished we will wash the plates.

• Tell me what you are going to do first. Then what happens?

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Succession also relates to the order of days, months and years. Days, months and seasons are  names in a repeating pattern, i.e. Monday to Sunday then the cycle occurs again, the calendar months go fromJanuary to December then repeat; the four seasons are always Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring then back to Summer. Knowing these patterns assists us to order them: Tuesday comes after Monday; the season before Summer is Spring; this month is March so next month is April.

Years are named by numbers and increase in order by 1 each year. They are successive by 1, i.e this year is 2023, next year will be 2024. 

Duration

Duration relates to the how much time has passed continuously between the start and finish of events. This duration may be measured in very small units of time (milliseconds) or much larger units like a millenium (1000 years). It can be measured by a range of tools, for example: a sand timer, sundial, calendars  clocks etc.

In the early years, experiences with duration should be explored in multiple modes, i.e. using the senses, movement and language. For example, children could listen to and create regular but informal units like clapping. This sets up an audible tempo to judge duration. For example:

• What can you do in 10 claps?

• How many claps will it take to put your shoes on?

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The event could be a song the children know well. This adds a more standard unit - the length of the song.

For example:

• Can we finish packing up the toys as we play Mary Had a Little Lamb? 

Both of these suggestions relate duration with music, an application of time set up in the coding of notation and musical structures (bars, time signatures). 

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If you have access to a sand timer, this sets up duration that is observable - the children can see the sand passing through the hour glass. They may know this formally as 1 minute or 2 minutes timers or just as 'until the sand runs out'. Posing and reflecting on questions that promote a comparison of what can be done in the same amount of time can be facilitated using tools like the sand timer. For example:

• Let's watch the sand timer. If we clap this beat, how many claps do you think can we do before it runs out?

• Let's watch the timer again. We did __ claps, do you think we can do more or less star jumps in this time? Tell me why.

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Building on this idea, children could keep a record of how long it takes them to do something then try and improve on this time. It might be running to the fence and back, through an obstacle course or even tying their shoe laces. The important point here is that the event (distance to fence, laces on shoes) is kept constant so the time change (duration) can be compared.