Explaining tomorrow and today

[Sparkles3]

My 3 year old has a lot of difficulty understanding time concepts and despite my best efforts, I can't seem to help! For example, sometimes I'll say that we'll do something 'tomorrow after he's had a night's sleep' - but the next day he'll say 'is it tomorrow today?' so has understood that the activity will take place the following day but can't understand the word relevance. Another one is 'is is tonight today' and those type of things. He isn't stupid by any means, but no matter how I try to cover this, I fail! Anybody got any ideas on how to put this across please? Or do I just have to wait patiently until it clicks naturally?

[WoWo]

"Or do I just have to wait patiently until it clicks naturally?"

I think thats the best thing, I do understand that you need for him to know when tomorrow or tonight is but as you say you can explain that in other ways. The word relevance will come with time and repatition. So continue to use the word tomorrow but also explain when that is.

[Brinjal]

I always used " one sleep or two sleeps " etc to explain time. "We are going on a picnic after 2 sleeps". It always seemed to work. Tomorrow never registered with my children.

[MrsJo49155]

"sleeps" is the way we get it across to children in our reception class at school too so dont panic because a 3 year old doesnt understand the concept. It is great fun on run up to holidays and trips to count in "sleeps"!

At least he is patient enough to wait until tomorrow even if he isnt sure what day it is when it arrives :O)

[Hgrove]

When my daughter was in yr 1 her teacher told me that time and money were the hardest things to teach - and that was in year 1 i.e. 5 and 6 year olds. So I think you should wait a bit longer.

[bandy]

You just wait patiently. He isn't old enough to have that concept yet, give it another year or two.