Telling the time can be a complex business – there are two (or even three) hands on an analogue clock, working on different scales. There are halves and quarters and multiples of five. There are 60 minutes in an hour, but variously 12 or 24 hours in a day. And if that isn’t enough, every clock that you look at is different. Some have hands and numbers, some numbers but no hands and some hands but no numbers at all! Despite all this, telling the time is a skill that almost every adult has complete mastery of.
Parents and schools in partnership
Teaching a child to tell the time is a perfect opportunity for schools and parents to work together in partnership. It can be a challenging topic in the classroom as children of the same age can be at really different stages in their understanding. It is however an area where parents are confident in their own skills and can see a clear purpose for learning. They are able to work at the pace of their individual child and are also with them as the clock shows more hours of the day than a teacher. They go to more places together and see a greater variety of different timepieces. Parents can relate the time to the interests and routines of their own family. It’s a skill that benefits from frequent, brief practice over a number of years to gain fluency in – which lends itself more to family life than the classroom. It is also a skill that all adults in a child’s life can help them with, from big sisters to grandparents.
What parents may not know is how children learn to tell the time: the sequence the skills are mastered in and ways to explain the tricky bits or resolve misconceptions. This is where the pedagogical expertise of teachers can come in. They can explain and practice concepts in class and suggest activities to try at home.
When do children learn to tell the time?
In the curriculum, children start learning the vocabulary of time in Reception; before and after, yesterday, today and tomorrow, day and night. In Year 1, o’clock and half past times are introduced alongside comparing hours, minutes and seconds. In Year 2, children build on their understanding of the clock to include quarter to and past and then times to the nearest 5 minutes. They also learn the number of minutes in an hour and hours in a day. In Year 3, children start telling the time to the nearest minute and deepen their understanding of time vocabulary with am and pm times, seconds in a minute and days in a month, year and leap year. Digital time is also introduced and then the 24 hour clock. In Year 4 these skills are consolidated and from then on attention turns to conversion between units of time, working out durations and problem solving. With learning to tell the time, as with everything, children progress at different rates and master skills at different ages.
Time is a popular topic on Learning with Parents and there are lots of activities for different ages, including:
- Noon or Midnight – Go for a walk in the dark to talk about differences between day and night.
- Fun time – plan some things to do at certain times, for example a bike ride at 11 o clock. Keep an eye on the clock to spot those times.
- Time to Roll game – Take a real or paper plate clock, a dice and some stickers. Use the stickers to cover the numbers on the dice with minute intervals – 5, 10, 15, 20,25,30. Start at 12 o’clock. Take it in turns to roll the dice and count on the minutes. The person to move the time across 2 o’clock wins!
Learning to tell the time is a life skill children are often keen to master. Many relish the feeling of independence and control it gives them and are proud when they can use their own watch to tell others the time.
Top tips when teaching a child to tell the time
- Go step by step and be patient – it can take a year or two to master telling the time.
- Practice little and often. Draw children’s attention to the clock in passing and without pressure.
- Link the time to family activities and routines.
- Analogue before digital – analogue clocks show the underlying concepts of time more clearly; that it is continuously moving, you can see the whole hour and how minutes relate to hours. It’s also easier to get a sense of how long from one time until another.
- If children are finding a step trickier than you expected, check they have the underlying number skills – counting to 60, counting in 5s, recognising halves and quarters and numbers that add to make 60.
- Make it fun – design paper plate clocks, challenge children to do things by a certain time and spot different types of clock out and about.
- Make it interesting – compare the times it gets dark in different seasons, find out about daylight hours in different countries, compare time zones, debate topics like school start times.
It was fun explaining times to Evie and helping her set her own alarm clock! 
Sophie, parent user
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