How do you explain Daylight Savings Time to a 7 year old?!?

So last weekend, my oldest son, Will, started asking me about the time change. (Of course, he thinks the time change is just a great excuse to go to bed an hour later and get up an hour earlier) so this has been no small amount of trepidation on our part! Anyway...

So Monday morning he's in the bedroom at 6 am asking me to explain to him how it's possible to "lose or gain an hour." I tried to explain as simply as I could by using such logic as, "Well, see the government declares a time when we all move our clocks forward or backward and then..." or "okay so you have to look at the whole thing in light of a one year period of time." All of which yielded no fruit.

So finally, I got out a piece of paper and drew the numbers 1 to 24 in a big long row.

then... I said something like, "In March, we all "rename" 2 am, 3 am, and 3 am, 4 am, and 4 am, 5 am..."

to which I think he responded, "That's funny."

Then I drew another set of numbers under that and said, "Then in November we all "change the names back" to what they were before."

I don't know... I think he got it, I'm not sure I ever fully answered the question of "Why" for him though...

Maybe it's cause I don't really know why we do that myself...

Oh well, I guess I'll try again in 6 months...

All I know is, I'm still hungry at 11 am and tired at 10 pm. Weird.

Just a bloggish thought,

Matt