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My kids hate the "quarter to four" construction because, in their words, it makes them do math in order to tell time. Which, of course makes me prefer it just
by hamburglar 4y ago
My kids hate the "quarter to four" construction because, in their words, it makes them do math in order to tell time. Which, of course makes me prefer it just to force them to get comfortable with it. I've even pointed out how 60 is nicely divisible by a lot of numbers, so we can say "a twelfth to 4" just to be a pain in the butt. :)
- SamBam 4y agoI really think it simply depends on whether you're used to analog or digital. I actually learned to tell time by someone telling me that one side of the clock if the "past" side and the other is the "to" side (a little hand-wavey around 30-40 past). This made sense to me. What was important was the closest hour, and how many minutes (or fractions) past or to it was. I taught my kids similarly. Starting with the hours, and then "half past" and then "quarter to" and "quarter past." Only after all that was second-nature did I even explain to them the idea of 60 minutes.