This fact- and photo-filled Smithsonian Penguin Young Reader will fill you in on how people first began measuring time and why knowing "when" is important.
Time is when things happen and how long they take to happen--but how long is all that ? The history of telling time is the history of inventions and communication, from hour glasses to atomic clocks, from calendars to chronometers. Tick-Tock is a fun look at the many ways different people have tried to get in sync.
Checking in the new books and this caught my eye because we have been trying to help SD with passage of time. I guess I learned to tell time in 1st or 2nd grade. This book seems like it would reach her better then, since she is still figuring out days of the week, and what a week even means. But I liked that this covered a history of time and time keeping. Worth using in the future.
There's a bit of a mismatch with this book. Penguin themselves place it as a book for fluent readers at Guided Reading level Q, meaning that it's a book that 4th graders should be able to read to themselves. Penguin's website recommends the book for ages 6-8.
This is definitely a read aloud book for kids who would not already know the information. Kids who can read it independently will already know the basics of time and will probably be bored by most of the content, though they might enjoy the parts about sundials and water clocks.