We used a cute little pebble mouse that we’d made earlier, but you could use any sort of mouse toy. We used twigs for our rock clock hands, and talked about how we needed a short one for the hour hand and a longer one for the minute hand (and because her white clock also happened to have a second hand, we used a skinny twig to represent that too). We studied JJ’s white clock to work out where the numbers should go, and what length and thickness the hands should be.
This was also a good chance to talk about and practise how to read an analog clock. The numbers 6, 7, 9, 10, 11 and 12 are tricky for her: she still can’t ‘read’ these numbers yet, but she works out what they are based on their position in the sequence. It’s also a good opportunity to see how she is going with her numeral recognition skills. Some of the numbers are a bit hard to decifer, but that’s the point really – to give JJ a chance to practise her writing skills in a playful way. (Metallic gold markers also work well on dark coloured rocks – or you could also try using a liquid paper pen).
To make our rock clock, my 4.5 year old daughter JJ wrote the numbers 1-12 on dark grey rocks from our garden, using a metallic silver Sharpie permanent marker. I’m not sure if these are the ‘official Hickory Dickory Dock lyrics’, but this is what we sing at our place anyway.
The first nursery rhyme off the chopping block is a favourite of mine: Hickory Dickory Dock. I’m so excited to be joining some really lovely bloggers in bringing you a bunch of nursery rhyme extension crafts and activities for all your favourite nursery rhyme songs. This is the first post of a brand new series called Rhyme Time! Make a rock clock as a fun Hickory Dickory Dock nursery rhyme activity for kids, for a fun hands on way to practise writing, numeral recognition and clock reading skills through play.