Making a "time map"

The other day, while I was getting the laundry done, my daughter had a question for me.
"Mom, isn't it so that the night is as long as the day?"
I twisted my mind for a moment, and told her to go find her crayons, a blank sheet of paper and meet me at the living room table.
There I explained to her that in a day and a night there are 24 hours. And to see if they hold the same amount of hours we would first have to draw up all the hours.
We decided to start with midnight, because my daughter pointed out that this is when a new day begins. (If I where to do it again, I would explain that the first hour we "count" is one o'clock. Because this would work out better using "military time" and counting up to 24)

I had brought her vitamin glass, and used it to draw circles. Every time I drew a new circle I consequently talked her through the numbers, which supplied her with a lot of repetition:

"We place 12 on the top, 1 and 2 on the way down, 3 is half way down, then there is 4 and 5, and 6 is at the bottom, 7 and 8 on the way up, 9 half way up and 10 and 11 to complete the circle."

I explained that when we have a full hour, the long hand always points straight up at 12, and the short hand points at the number of the hour. We agreed that we would use the green crayon to draw the long hand, and the orange crayon for the short hand. I drew the circle and the numbers and she filed inn green and orange hands.

We drew little moons beside the hours that we should spend sleeping. And a sun marked the hours that we are awake. We talked about the different hours as we drew them up and discussed what we usually do at that time of day. So my daughter quickly came up with additional symbols.
We drew a little staircase at nine o'clock because this is when they get to come up from their room in the morning, as well as a slice of bread to symbolize breakfast.
At 12 o'clock we drew a little bowl of pasta, because this is when we have lunch.
A tiny drawing of dad's store meant that this is when he closes the store. A drawing of our house at 5 o'clock meant that this is when he comes home, the hot dog is for dinner. My favorite is the heart at bedtime. "That's because I fall asleep thinking about how much you love me mom."

When it was all filled in we counted 12 moons and 12 suns and therefore concluded that "Yes the night is as long as the day."

We laminated it and my daughter decided it was a time map. "Because I can look at our clock to see what time it is, and then i can go and look at my Time map to see what we are supposed to be doing."

-Julia-

"Behind the scenes"

While we waited for the laminating machine to get hot enough, my daughter changed in to her secret agent close. Double O zero licensed to laminate.

My son got good practice at tracing around the glass and made some pretty impressing timepieces of his own. Afterwards he traced around the scissors as well.