Clock

About this visual support

Numbers and hands mean nothing on their own, and for a child who does not yet link them to the events of the day, a clock is just a pattern on the wall. Time starts to make sense when half past seven means breakfast and four means pick-up, once a hand position ties to something real.

This is where visual support helps, by pairing a time with a picture of what happens then. When your child sees a toothbrush image next to a certain hand position, the clock turns concrete, and the jump from abstract number to familiar moment gets shorter. Over time the pattern grows familiar and your child senses how much is left until the next anchor.

A tip that tends to stick: choose three fixed anchor points in the day and place a picture at each, rather than every hour at once. Point at both the picture and the real clock, so the two link up. In the Routined app you can set the times beside the images in your child's day plan, and you try the setup free for fourteen days.