Time Tracker Visual Timer & Clock - 1 Piece, Classroom Tracker, Alarm Clock, Light Up Timer for Classroom, Visual Tracker

UPDATE (NOV 2013): We had another child in March of 2012 and he has finally reached the age where he is chatting a lot, very interested (in EVERYTHING), can communicate with us (modestly), and we can in turn communicate back to him. I love 18 months old!!! Due to the structure of our home, we decided to setup his crib in our bedroom. It has been working out very well, but in the past couple months he has been waking up at a ridiculous hour (5am or earlier) and will not stay quiet. If I get out of bed and talk to him, cover him up with his blankie, and say "It's night-night time..." he WILL lie there quietly until our alarm goes off or one of us gets up to go to the bathroom. Because of his responsiveness to my chats, I decided to break out our Time Tracker once again. It has been in a drawer since our other Son turned 4 years old and outgrew time outs and sleeping timers. I set the Time Tracker the same way I did for our other Son (12 hrs Green; 50 seconds Yellow; 10 seconds Red...yes, this Boy will sleep from 6:30pm to 6:30am, no problem). On the first and second night we setup the Time Tracker, our Baby Boy thought it was fun to point at and scream. But he soon lost interest in it and now I can turn it on, put him down for sleep, and if he wakes up before the designated time (6:30am) and starts making noise, I walk to his cribside, remind him that "Green Light is Night-Night" and he will honest-to-goodness either go back to sleep or just lay in the crib with his blankie & stuffed animal, sucking his thumb, and stay quiet until the Time Tracker turns Yellow (and then Red). Most times he is awake and starts yelling once the Tracker turns Yellow because he is excited to wake up. But some other times, he falls back asleep and he completely misses the Tracker turning Yellow or Red (no issue there...if he's asleep, we let him sleep!). The Time Tracker has worked for both of our boys and we've definitely gotten our milage out of it considering I bought it back in 2009. I'll probably use it once our youngest is old enough for Time Outs too. And once I pulled the device out of the old junk drawer, I had no problems remembering how to set and reset it...it really is a great device for kids! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- After reading many of the negative reviews on the Learning Resource Time Tracker, I was hesitant to buy it thinking it would break right out of the box. Not true at all. In fact, while it is not the most quality product I've ever purchased for my 2 1/2 year old son, it is definitely not the worst. It is what it is...and it does what it does...and it does both very well. I first saw the product on Nanny 911 and I did think about it again until I started having difficulty keeping my son in his time out spot without having to sit right next to him to keep him there. I combined the Time Tracker with the Take Out Time Out mat (overpriced, but cute) and now I hardly have any problems with him finishing his time outs. He thinks time outs are interesting now and he cannot wait to finish and hear the "Time's Up!" announcement so he can play again, while knowing that we are happy with him for doing his duty. While the Time Tracker may not be the easiest thing to program, as others have said, once you do it once it's pretty easy. I have gotten so used to it that I can change the timer from time out, to nap time, to overnight sleep time in less than a minute. I set it to all green on "manual setting" and only make it turn yellow for the last 50 seconds, and red the last 10 seconds. Seriously, those reviewers who say it's difficult are simply techno-phobic or lazy. It's not hard and all...and my son loves knowing that there is a set time on all of his duties. Hearing "Time's Up!" is one of his favorite things now. Finally, again on quality, this is not a toy. Do not let your kids play with it or it will cease to work. Let them see it, touch it, but only once. Tell them it is not a toy and keep it out of reach. It will break if dropped, so my solution is to not drop it. Problem solved. Get this product. It's pretty darn cool...

We have a child with special needs, so we live off of timers and warnings (especially visual) around our house. This one has been amazing because it can go up to 24 hours. We use it to help show him when it's time to get dressed and go swimming some evenings, when it's okay to knock on our door to play in the mornings, and all sorts of other things. The "yellow" function is wonderful -- we can adjust it to as many minutes as we want, so we usually use it as our "getting ready" time when leaving for somewhere (i.e. at yellow, he can get in the car and wait, or change into swim suit, or bathroom time before riding bikes, etc.) My ONLY complaint is that "red" is the end of the timer instead of "green," as we tend to use it more for "it's time to do xyz now!" But he gets the idea. It's been thrown and hasn't broken! :) Also, read the instructions carefully. It's not intuitive (which is nice because he can't easily change it...) but we figured it out pretty quickly.

First one sent: the timer/clock worked, but the lights and sounds did not. Returned and reordered. New one arrived in just a couple of days and it works perfectly in the one day we have had it. My son is autistic and responds well to visual cues so I decided to purchase this to help him organize his time better. He loves it. He kept running over to check how much time was left on the display. When it changed colors he became so excited. Very cute. My only gripe is that it is pretty complicated to figure out. I did it without the instructions, so it wasn't impossible, but it still is complicated. I do like that each stage (green, yellow, red) can be programmed in hours, minutes and seconds individually. So if I want my son to read for 20 minutes I can set it on green for 15 min and 30 seconds, than yellow for 4 min 30 seconds, and then red for just 10 seconds. If I have problems in the future I will update this post.

Bought this for niece who has autism. This timer has helped her learn that she needs to finish a task and help with waiting. The colors are bright and the sound is loud enough to hear across the room. Came with instructions and easy to read and set up. Good for kids and those who are on the spectrum. I can see teachers use this to help students as well. Can be good for adults who don't want to rely on phones or tablets.

The timer has worked really well for the month we have had it- and hopefully it will work for a long, long time! My 4-year-old was having a hard time being patient during quiet time since he had no concept of how long he had left. So this timer is perfect since he can see when he is almost done (yellow light). The timer is pretty easy to set and even easier to turn on. To initially set up the manual timer (where you can choose how many minutes the green light stays on, how many minutes for yellow, and how many for red) or the automatic timer (where you choose the total time length, like 1 hour, and it's automatically divided up into 80% green 15% yellow 5% red or something like that), it takes more button-pushing. But once you have that set, you just have to push menu, arrow over to your selected timer, push enter, and push start. So turning on the timer takes about 4 seconds. And you can turn it off mid-timer by holding down the menu button- handy, but make sure your kid doesn't figure that out :) Overall, it's a really helpful visual timer, especially with its "almost-there" yellow light, and we have had a great experience with it so far. Highly recommended, especially for little boys who love cars and stoplights like my boys do.

Please first read the positive reviews. You will notice that most people are giving positive reviews of the CONCEPT of this product and also the fact that using a visual timer has indeed helped their kids get ready. I agree on both counts. Parents, give yourself five-stars for implementing this idea. But don't give this product five-stars and lead people astray. This product is pathetic. Again, let's distinguish between idea and implementation. Five-stars for the idea of the product. Yes, the IDEA. ZERO stars for the product itself. You can tell maybe a clever mom thought of it (five stars here) but couldn't built it...so it got handed over to some really low-IQ person to actually design and build the interface and electronics (zero stars). How you program this thing is beyond STUPID. Reviewers are correct to say that it works if use the timer over and over with the same time. Heaven forbid you need to change that. A product that requires you to review the instructions EVERY time you use it is, well, there are no words for how dumb it is. We have 2 people with engineering degrees and masters in our house, who cannot figure it out. Maybe this product should be moved to the puzzle section...like a Rubik's cube. Then let's talk quality. We've been using it for 2 months. Since we first started using it, we experienced sudden stoppages of the lights. If you picked it up, sometimes it would start again. Today, the death knell tolled -- or it would have if any sound were coming out. The timer just plain stopped with 3 minutes to go. At least I think it was 3 minutes since the LCD only showed a partial display of the numbers. Batteries changed. Beat on it. No luck. Same condition. It didn't even reset. Absolutely dead. Overall, Time Tracker is a great concept but a pathetic excuse for a product. Learning Resources...you should be ashamed at selling this piece of junk. You are outright scamming people selling this product. Parents, please buy this with your eyes wide open and only if you have the money to waste.

I have to say that I was going to send this back because (insert I am an idiot here, or just a very tired mother of too many children) I thought it only went up to 24 minutes and I needed a 30 min timer. See, I warned you. I am going to err on the side of very tired mom here because it's true and I usually am really good with directions. So why 24 minutes? See this is what happens when you read things when tired. It's really 24 hours. Backing up a bit, so you can understand me a bit better, this is my third type of device like this from this company. The instructions are so-so. But, I really needed to have a visual timer for my son, whom I just started to homeschool (This is where tired comes in. Too many late nights planning out school work for the year). So, not wanting to have to go through the return process, I thought I would set it and see if it's easy and then just add the 6 more minutes I was desiring. So, I set it up for the 24 "minutes" and then did the increments I wanted and pressed start. 2 hours later, realized it NEVER went off. That's when the "ahh, I am an idiot" moment kicked in. So, now I have figured out how to program it correctly and I get my 30 minutes. So, onto the poor instructions. Setting it up can be tricky. You need to do math. Yeah, I know, I'm homeschooling and complaining about doing math. We all have our weaknesses. Anyway, you have the option of three time "targets" in which you need to tell it when the elected buzzer should go off to mark how much time is left. For example, if you want 60 minutes and the 2nd and third timer to go off at 15 minutes left and 1 minute left, you need to set the first timer for either 44 or 45 minutes, the second for 15 or 14 and the last for 1 minute. Have I lost you? Believe it or not, that's not the disappointing part. The part that disappoints me is that the actual sound mechanism will stop working properly. It happened right after I took it out of the box and put new batteries in it. It made a "scratchy" sound then the volume would no longer go up or down. It eventually started to work again and now it is moody and works when it wants to. Sadly, it seems that this is an issue that I have read about in other reviews. Too bad. It would be a good device otherwise. Well, if they improved their instructions too.

I have been very impressed with this little timer. As a stay at home mom with three young children, my house has been more organized than ever. My kids are finsihing their responsibilities in record time (along with a cool token chart set up like a chucky cheese reward system). The timer is easy to program after you remember what buttons to press and it only took me a few times of operating to remember. The timer can be turned off by holding down the menu button for three seconds (as stated in the manual) The timer can be paused by hitting an arrow and restarted by hitting start. My recommendation would be to have two standard times. You can use a manual and an auto and it is easier to keep using the two times instead of reprograming each time (but not impossible). When using chores, I give them chores that I think can be accomplished in ten minutes or less and constantly use that time. If I feel that they can't make that time and they are working very hard, I will pause it for a while so they won't be sad/penalized when they don't beat the timer. Overall - This is a great tool to help any mom or teacher! Note- Learning Resources is a top notch, high quality brand with many great educational tools, games, etc. (I am not in any way affiliated, just a very satisfied customer)