{five minute friday} Tick Tock: A Chalk Wall Clock

I rely on the cell phone in my pocket to know what time it is, completely ignoring all the clocks in our house most of the time. My boys on the other hand are fascinated by clocks - and not the digital ones on the appliances, but the real ones! 

So while they were at preschool the other day, I added a quick and easy clock to their chalkboard wall in the kitchen. They spotted it the second we came through the door after school, and man were they excited!

A while back, I started looking for a modern, silver clock hands on Amazon so that I could create a clock on our chalk wall. I found this one that I really liked, but just couldn't justify spending $45! Recently I found a wall decal clock on clearance at Target, and even though I didn't really love the style of the decal numbers, I realized that the included silver clock hands would be perfect for our chalkboard wall!

  

I removed the clock mechanism from the package, setting the rest aside. Then I grabbed out a battery, a nail, my hammer, and some chalk.

Before hanging the clock, I had to clean all of our existing chalk drawings from the wall. It used to cause me so many headaches trying to get the wall clean, but then I discovered a crazy chalkboard cleaning method that works amazing well and saves me so much time.

Once the wall was clean, I held up the clock hands to decide how high on the wall I wanted to place them, and then I hammered in a small nail.

Then I grabbed a piece of chalk and added some numbers.

Just like that we had a clock on our kitchen chalkboard wall! Talk about an easy five minute project!

The clock is up high enough that it's out of the boys' reach - allowing them plenty of room to draw on the lower half of the wall without bending the somewhat flimsy clock hands.

It's so simple, but I like the way it adds a little style to the black wall!

And, of course, I can erase the numbers and rewrite them any time I want!

But best of all, we'll be able to use this chalkboard clock as an educational tool. When the boys are old enough to learn to tell time, I can write in all of the hours and minutes to help them understand. And that's just the start of it, I can also envision using this clock to help my sons learn to read and spell numbers...

When they start learning math, we can turn the clock into an addition lesson...

And when the progress from addition to algebra - well, the clock can come right along for the ride...

Both my husband an I were pretty nerdy kids, and used to beg our dads to create math problems for us to solve. So if our boys are equally nerdy {fingers crossed}, I can envision us giving them a list of twelve math problems to solve - each equaling a number 1 though 12. Then we can make them write the math problems on the chalkboard wall next to the corresponding clock position as their "answers." {And in case you are wondering, yes, it did hurt my head a little bit to come up with some of these math problems!}

I think this is my favorite five minute project yet!! It ticks so many boxes... it's black and white, which I love; it's customizable and will allow me to start playing around with hand-drawn typography {you know, because I need more hobbies}; and we can use it for educational purposes. Win. Win. Win.

Have a chalkboard wall or thinking of adding one to your home? You might want to check out these posts!

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