Paper Plate Clock Craft

Paper plate clocks – fun to paint and decorate, and a great way for kids to work on number recognition, ordering numbers and telling time.

Yesterday, I had two hooligan grads here with me, and we were working on adding some crafts to our made a whole bunch of A-Z paper plate crafts collection.  One of my favourites from the crafts we made yesterday was this simple paper plate clock.

In this digital age, kids don’t get a lot of experience learning about old-fashioned analogue clocks. Making a craft like this one familiarizes them with this kind of clock – the minute hand, the hour hand, and the way the numbers on the face of a clock are laid out.

It’s also a fun way for kids to play around with numbers – sorting them and ordering them, and if your child is very young, even just recognizing the numbers that make up a clock-face.

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How we made our paper plate clock:

We started by dumping a big container of foam shapes, letters and numbers out on the floor, and we sifted through them until we’d found all of the numbers for our clock.  That took some time, and it was a great exercise for the kindergartener.

Once we’d found all of our numbers, one hooligan painted the paper plate with acrylic craft paint while the other hooligan worked on ordering all of the numbers we’d found from 1 to 12.

The next step was to glue the numbers on the clock.

For young children who may have difficulty placing the numbers in the proper around the face of the clock, you can write them on in pencil, and your child can match the foam number up with your pencil marks, and glue them in place.

My guy used a paint brush and a small pot of glue for this step.

While he was gluing his numbers, I cut a couple of clock hands out of a piece of yellow craft foam.

When he’d glued the hands in place, we talked about what time the clock displayed.

Our paper plate clock will look so cheery on a wall in the playroom!

Looking for more paper plate crafts?

Check out 17 Easy Paper Plate Crafts for Kids!

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Jackie Currie

Jackie is a mom, wife, home daycare provider, and the creative spirit behind Happy Hooligans. She specializes in kids’ crafts and activities, easy recipes, and parenting. She began blogging in 2011, and today, Happy Hooligans inspires more than 2 million parents, caregivers and Early Years Professionals all over the globe.