We had to play cards by candle light on our no electricity day! One of the candles we used was an ‘hour’ candle that we bought from the Tower of London many years ago! Such candles were apparently used by monks in the olden days to measure the hours of study that they did! So we lit the candle, and Lucas timed it on his stop watch, to see if it actually did take an hour to burn to the first notch! Each notch truly was ‘一个小时’  (yī gè xiǎo shí), 1 hour!  The candle had roman numerals on it, so it was a great opportunity to learn our numbers in Roman Numerals!

When we play ‘What time is it Mr Wolf?’, ‘ in Mandarin we say ‘老狼老狼几点了？’ ( lǎo láng lǎo láng jǐ diǎn le？) so this time we could say  ‘蜡烛蜡烛几点了？ ‘ ( là zhú là zhú jǐ diǎn le?) Candle, candle, what time is it?

If you don’t happen to have an hour candle from the Tower of London, you can practice by playing the wolf game!  Here’s some vocab that might help!

蜡烛	là zhú	Candle	两点	liǎng diǎn	Two o’clock
老狼	lǎo láng	Old wolf	三点	sān diǎn	Three o’clock
几点了？	jǐ diǎn le?	What time is it?	四点	sì diǎn	Four o’clock
一点	yī diǎn	One o’clock	五点	wǔ diǎn	Five o’clock
六点	liù diǎn	Six o’clock	九点	jiǔ diǎn	Nine o’clock
七点	qī diǎn	Seven o’clock	十点	shí diǎn	Ten o’clock
八点	bā diǎn	Eight o’clock	十一点	shí yī diǎn	Eleven o’clock
十二点	shí èr diǎn	Twelve o’clock	小时	xiǎo shí	Hour