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Why is a traditional or analog clock-face better than a digital clock when children are learning to tell the time?

Why do we look at a clock? Usually it's to see how much time has passed or how much time is left until a certain time. We seldom look at a clock, or watch, just to see what time it is. We use the circle to quickly estimate, for example, how much time to go until a certain time.

An analog clock face (the one with numbers and hands) is so much better for teaching children how to tell the time than the digital clock face (the one with just the time in numbers). The analog clock face gives us the language of time; the halves, quarters, past, and 'till. It also enables us to easily estimate elapsed and accrued time using the spatial properties of the circle. The digital clock, or watch does none of these things. To work out elapsed time we have to perform an arithmetic computation since there is no spatial representation of time to help us estimate.

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