The Time Teller

Do you have the problem in your house where your little ones ask "what are we doing today," you rattle off a list of items, and they look at you and say, "what!?"  Then you back track, repeat maybe just the next thing you're going to do.  Then you go to the clock and point where the big and little hands should be when that next activity occurs.  This works well, but I think I have come up with an even better solution.

This is the Time Teller.

Instead of them asking you all the time, every morning you can organize it together and they can check it themselves throughout the day.

What you need:

Fabric - cut 16"x48"

Plastic

Coordinating Thread

A clock

Cut your 16"x48" piece and then cut off the top 3".  This is to create a dowel sheath.  If you want to skip this and just use tacks, that's fine too.

Hem the 2 long sides and 1 short side of the bottom piece.  Hem 1 short side of the top piece (I'll explain below).

This is what you should end up with.

The other short side of the top piece needs to be hemmed in so the width of the top and bottom pieces are exact.  

I ended up having to hem mine just slightly more than my other side.

Fold your top piece in half length-wise, wrong sides together.

Place it on your bottom piece, raw edges together, and right sides together.

Sew a straight line across it to bind all edges.

This is what you should end up with.

I wanted to hide all raw edges, so I took it a step further.  Roll the raw edges under some of the bottom piece.  

From the top it should look like this.

And from the side it looks like this.

Sew a line down the edge of the fold to secure it.

The front of your fabric should look like this.

And here's the back view.

Now you need to cut the plastic to fit your bottom part.  I laid the plastic on top of my piece and cut.  You can cut however works best for you.

I'm cutting...

And now I'm done with that part.

The hard part of this project was that I was expecting to use my machine to sew the pockets.  Not so much.  The plastic is too sticky and the walking foot won't move.  YOU WILL BE HAND SEWING.  It will be worth it.  :)

I measured in 4" from the left long side and marked it with a fine point sharpie using little dashes on the plastic.  Then I hand sewed long stitches to secure.  Then I measured 3" apart down the length with my ruler, marking again with small dashes.  I love the fine point sharpie!  This way you don't have to measure the whole time your sewing.  I would recommend a movie while your hand sewing.  It will make it seem a little less mundane.  Also, pin it in place as you work your way down - plastic and fabric like to slip around together.  

Here is mine completely sewn.  If you look hard you can see my dashes and stitches. 

Make your inserts for the pockets.  I used this printable clock template.  I copied and pasted it into a word document.  Then I resized it to my needs.  I printed about 26 and drew the hands on for every hour and half hour, and a couple in between.  Print off and draw as many clocks as you want.  One thing I'm glad I did was write the time digitally on the bottom corner.  It's so much easier to find the time you're looking for to have both on there.

Then make your activity inserts.  I did all sorts of activities: the store, park, lunch, book, church, preschool, etc.  Do what you need.  Then draw a simple picture next to it so your kiddos will know what it is without having to read.  You could even have them help draw the pictures.

You're ready to go with the Time Teller.  Put your inserts into the pockets.  Card stock would probably work best and last longer; I didn't have any on hand and my regular paper is doing good for now.  I have reserved the last pocket row for the leftover clocks and activities.  That way everything can be stored right with the Time Teller.

I mounted a clock above it, hanging the Time Teller as low as possible.  And wa-lah, the kids are happy, I'm happy, and we're learning to tell time.  I hope you have fun and ignore some of my cheesy drawings!  

Linking to: