Review: Ravensburger’s My First Clock

It’s not just Master C that I’ve been trying to do educational stuff with this summer. Little Miss C hasn’t escaped my attempts to be a good parent, so I’ve had her helping me to review Ravensburger’s My First Clock which also comes from their Play & Learn range.

The game consists of a clock with movable hands and 27 clock cards. Each off these shows a time on an analogue clock on one side and then on the reverse there is the same time shown on a digital clock. Now, what I find a tad strange about this is that the digital side shows the time twice, one for morning and once for afternoon, but it doesn’t use either 24 hour clock or AM or PM. Just the times written twice, once against a yellow background with a sun picture for daytime and against a dark blue background with a moon for nighttime. I’m assuming this is deliberate, but to me it seems a bit like a missed learning opportunity.

The game’s instructions suggests three different games you can play with the clock and cards, all of which work around the ideas of telling the time and also the concept of the different times of the day and what happens when.

The thing with My First Clock though is that you don’t have to just play the games that are suggested, you can use the large clock and cards as learning resources to support how your children learn best. The large clock could be used to put a time on when something is going to happen so that kids can compare a real clock to it – for example, set it to half past eight and tell them that when the kitchen clock reaches that time it means it’s time to get their shoes on for school. The time cards can then be used either as part of a game or you could make up other activities based around what times of day certain things happen.

My First Clock has an age guide of 4-9 years and can be played with between 1 and 6 players. As I’ve mentioned above though, the game contents also make great learning resources for children of any age learning about time.

Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of My First Clock for the purposes of this review. All opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links.