One night, Little J hears the nocturnal Barking Owl and becomes fascinated by how the owl stays awake at night. In the morning, he is woken by the carolling of magpies and on the way to school, he is swooped by Maggie, the magpie. Miss Chen teaches the class about nocturnal animals.

Explain - Tell time to the quarter hour, using the language of 'past' and 'to'

Theme - TIME

Re-watch Little J & Big Cuz, Episode 13 ‘Night Owl and Morning Maggie’, and draw students’ attention to the magpie nest and nanna’s story about the protection of the nest by the father magpie, and his feeding the baby birds.

Place a nest with four eggs in the middle of the classroom. Tell students that they are magpie eggs. Place two more nests on the ground, one on each side of the first nest. Ask a student to take half of the eggs from the centre nest and put them in one of the other nests. Question students as to how many eggs are in each nest (2 + 2 + 0 = 4). Write the whole numbers (4, 2) and the fraction (1/2) on the board. Halve one set of eggs again and put one egg in the third nest (2+1+1 = 4). Have students conclude that half of ‘4’ is ‘2’, and half of ‘2’ is ‘1’; therefore, ‘1’ is one-quarter of ‘4’. Repeat the demonstration and have students play with other objects, such as, biscuits, apples, tennis balls, etc, and halve and quarter them.

Show students a clock face. Ask students to explain what each hand points to on the clock face, i.e., the hour hand and the minute hand. Place both hands on the number 12, and ask students which number is half of twelve – ‘6’. Place the minute hand on the number ‘6’. Ask students to tell the time – ‘half’ past 12. Access Telling Time to the Half Hour video clip to illustrate the time concept of the ‘half hour’.

Have students practise identifying the same concept for some of the other hours, and on various types of clocks both analogue and digital.

Introduce students to the concept of the quarter hour in a similar way, putting the minute hand on both the ‘3’ and the ‘9’ to indicate quarter to and quarter past the hour. Access Learning the Clock (animation), Telling Time for Children, video clip, to assist students’ understanding.

Revisit the events of Little J & Big Cuz, Episode 13 ‘Night Owl and Morning Maggie’ and have students use a clock face to suggest times for each event, including listing times that are ’on the hour’, ‘half past’, ‘quarter past’ and ‘quarter to’ the hour.

Events from the episode should include:

1. Little J and Big Cuz arrive home from school.

2. Old Dog lies on his couch to go to sleep.

3. Nanna tells Little J to go to sleep and the Barking Owl wakes Old Dog.

4. Little J wakes to the sound of the Barking Owl and starts his drawing

5. Little J eventually goes to sleep.

6.Little J and Big Cuz have breakfast in the morning.

7.Little J and Big Cuz leave for school.

8.Little J and Big Cuz come across the magpie nest.

9.The kids at school sing together.

10. Miss Chen talks about micro bats.

11. Lunch time at school.

12. Walking home from school.

13. Popping popcorn.

14. B-Boy returns home.

15. Nanna puts Little J to bed.

16. Next morning.

17. Nanna and Little J go for a morning walk.