Pam Tim: The New Children’s Watch

Children aged 3 to 6 have a particular relationship with time and very often use the key moments of the day as reference points (leaving for school, lunch, afternoon snack, “mum time” to mean school pick-up, etc.). The company Winjah looked into the subject and developed the Pam Tim watches.

While the Flik Flak watch from Swatch offered a playful way to learn how to tell the time, Pam Tim introduces a complete, fun, relevant and gentle learning approach to reading time, with a set comprising a pictogram watch, a booklet and a card game presenting the different stages of the day linked to the watch’s pictograms. The idea is to build on children’s exceptional visual memory.

At the end of this first learning phase, the child can move on to the second watch—this time with hands—on their wrist.

Upstream of the concept, it was genuine research work that gave birth to the watch. In partnership with the Ministry of National Education, a researcher from the Experimental Psychology Laboratory in Tours successfully tested the concept with nursery school pupils.

The association of activity pictograms (bus, snack, etc.) and time-related ones (sun and moon) is quickly absorbed by little ones, reassured by these new reference points. A “pie chart” divides the activity into four equal parts, giving the child a kind of countdown to the next key moment in the activity.

This is truly an initiative to be applauded. The test proved genuinely convincing with my own child. At 4 years old, the pictogram concept was quickly understood. Only the “countdown” required a bit of explanation.

That said, I would add one essential improvement in my view: the ability to adjust the duration of each activity. Because all it takes is for one activity to be a little longer or shorter (for example, the morning trip to school) to shift the whole race of time on the watch.

This first version of the watch offers a breakdown of the day based on averages observed among children; the concept would be close to perfect if activity durations could be personalised.

The price, just as clever, is €34.90.

The website: www.pam-tim.com