Q&A for How to Teach Kids to Tell Time

Make your own clock with construction paper and paper fasteners. Cut the clock hands out of the construction paper and hold them in place with a paper fastener.

Use your own classroom clock as a reference to show your students how the second, minute, and hour hands are moving. Then use differently colored crayons to explain the relationship between the second, minute, and hour hands.

It’s great you’re asking for help telling time! I think you’re asking about reading the minutes on the long hand and if you should count by 5 up to the number the long hand is pointing to or to multiply that number by 5. Both ways would work! Do the math in the way that is most comfortable for you. Try both methods out and you should reach the same solution. For example, if the long hand points to 4 both results equal 20. Counting by 5 four times: 5, 10, 15, 20!! And multiplying by 4: 5 X 4 = 20 both give you the same result!

There is no set age children are expected to learn how to tell time, as every child learns at a different pace. Telling time on a clock without numbers will depend on the child’s understanding and memory of the number positions and what each number represents.

Try creating a timeline with hash marks that represent different routine activities during the day. You can find an example online, such as through the site learnzillion.com. Go to the homepage and search for "distinguish between a.m. and p.m."

It’s so exciting you’re learning how to tell time from a clock! The dots between numbers on a ticking clock symbolize minutes. If you count by 5s up to the number before to where the long hand points to and then add to it the amount of dots, you end up with the total number of minutes past the hour. To see this in action in a helpful video I suggest searching on YouTube for “how to tell time on an analog clock.”

Depends on which hand is where. If the short hand is on 12, then it's 12:20. If the long hand is on 12, then it's 4:00.

Maybe, if someone knows what certain numbers on the clock mean but not all of them, or if someone knows how to read a digital clock but not the analog clock with hands and numbers.

Use a pizza example, at quarter past a quarter of the pizza has been eaten, at half past half the pizza has been eaten.

Tell your children or child that the hour hand is the shorter hand. You could use different colours to represent the minute and hour hands to help them understand. When they understand which hand is which, teach them o'clock times.