Telling the time is a core numeracy skill that your child will be taught in stages during primary school.
Boost your child's telling the time skills with downloadable and interactive resources
From telling the time skills for beginners, like reading the time to the hour on a clock face, to KS2 telling the time techniques like converting analogue time to digital time, in this section of the site you'll find everything you need on how to help your child learn this vital maths skill. What are the 12-hour and 24-hour clock and what is meant by time intervals? We explain each concept clearly.
Then you can test your child's skills with our teacher-created telling the time worksheets on all the core skills including matching digital and analogue time, calculating time intervals, reading the 24-hour clock and writing time. These are all printable PDFs (with answers included) but we also have on-screen activities, such as ordering the days of the week and the months of the year and converting between 12-hour and 24-hour clocks. There are also practice clock templates.
You'll find even more advice and games in our fantastic Telling the time learning pack. And there's even a Teach your child time book, covering every skill your child has to master from Reception to Year 6, plus targeted and child-friendly fun activities and games.
Articles
Best time-teaching products
Great toys, books and resources to help your child learn to tell the time on analogue and digital timepieces, from clock face recognition to estimating time differences on the 24-hour clock.
Teach your child to read a clock
Reading an analogue clock is a tricky skill to master. Help your child get to grips with it with our teaching-time guide.
What are analogue and digital?
We explain what analogue and digital are and how and when children are taught to read clock faces and convert between analogue and digital times in primary school.
Tutorials
Ordering months of the year tutorial
Let our digital teacher show you how we order the months of the year, then have a go yourself!
Telling the time to the hour tutorial
Our digital teacher is showing Molly how to tell the time to the hour. Can you help?
Telling the time on a 24-hour clock tutorial
Our interactive teacher will show you a quick and easy method to tell them time on a 24-hour clock, then you can have a go yourself!
Worksheets
Telling the time - Practice clock templates
If your child is learning to tell the time, use TheSchoolRun's clock practice templates to help support their learning. You can put together a clock face with moveable hands, write the time on digital and analogue clocks and fill in different times on the blank clock faces.
Understanding clock faces to the hour
Time-telling practice for Y1 children: reading and writing the time to the hour on blank clock faces. Remind them to check the length of their hours and minutes hands!
Match digital and analogue time (quarter past)
In Year 2 children learn to tell the time to quarter past and quarter to the hour. Help them practise with this simple matching worksheet.
Also see:
Learning to tell the time is a process which spans the primary-school years, and children can find it overwhelmingly hard. The Telling the Time pack is a complete guide to everything you need to know to support your child and help them get to grips with this vital skill, bursting with practical suggestions, advice from experts and activity sheets for all the key stages.
What you'll find in your Telling the Time learning pack:
- Teachers' advice and tips to help your child learn about time
- How to help your child understand an analogue clock face
- 21 ways to incorporate practice into everyday life
- Telling-the-time game ideas
- Reading and writing time worksheets covering o'clock, half past, quarter past and quarter to and reading time to the nearest minute
- Estimating and predicting time puzzles
- Blank clock templates
- Telling the Time Bingo
- Telling the Time Dominoes
Teach your child time
Teach your child time is a reference guide and home-teaching kit which will help you understand exactly what telling-the-time skills your child is expected to have mastered in each year of the primary school curriculum.
Primary school teacher and parent Alice Hart has compiled information, tips and activities to ensure that you have the right information at your fingertips so you can quickly make sure your child has fully grasped and achieved each and every skill for their correct year group and using the same methods that they are taught (rather than confusing them with the one you were taught at school!).
You'll be able to print off highly targeted and child-friendly fun worksheets to help them master each of the essential skills as they progress through school – in fun, five-minute sessions.
Teach your child time is a downloadable, printable eBook, available for £4.99.
