Telling time worksheets

Each sheet has twelve clocks. Choose Write the time and children read each clock and write the time on the line. Choose Draw the hands and the clocks are blank, with the time printed under each one. Half and half mixes the two.

Pick the times to fit the class: o'clock only, o'clock and half past, quarter past and quarter to, five-minute steps, or any minute. From the quarter-hour level up, no more than a quarter of the clocks land on the hour, so the sheet practises what it says.

The sheet number picks the clocks. The same number always prints the same clocks, so a class can share one sheet and you can print its answer key later. The answer key shows every clock with its hands, the time in digits and the time in words.

Drag either hand. Turn the minute hand all the way round and the hour hand moves on with it, as on a real clock. With the keyboard, focus the clock and use the arrow keys for a minute or five at a time, or Page Up and Page Down for an hour.

Beside the clock is the time in digits and in words, past and to, then the way it's said in parts of the US, and the digits read aloud. Quiz me asks you to read the clock from four answers, or to set the clock to a time and press Check.

The short hand is the hour hand and the long hand is the minute hand. When the minute hand points straight up at 12, it's o'clock. When it points down at 6, it's half past.

Count the minutes in fives: each number on the clock is five minutes on from the last. Up to half past, say the minutes past the hour, as in twenty-five past six. After half past, count on to the next hour: 6:35 is twenty-five to seven, and 6:45 is quarter to seven.

Between the fives, say the number of minutes: 7:22 is twenty-two minutes past seven. The hour hand moves too. It turns half a degree a minute, so at half past three it sits halfway between the 3 and the 4, and at 3:55 it's nearly at the 4. A common slip is to read the hour the hand is nearest rather than the one it has passed.

Many people read the digits instead, so 5:34 is five thirty-four and 9:05 is nine oh five. In the US you'll also hear after and of: a quarter after eight, and a quarter of three for 2:45.

In England, the national curriculum starts in Year 1 with o'clock and half past, drawing the hands to show them. Year 2 goes to five minutes, including quarter past and quarter to. Year 3 reads clocks to the nearest minute, with Roman numerals from I to XII and 12-hour and 24-hour clocks, and Year 4 converts between analogue and digital 12-hour and 24-hour times.

In the US Common Core, grade 1 tells time in hours and half-hours (1.MD.B.3), grade 2 to the nearest five minutes with a.m. and p.m. (2.MD.C.7), and grade 3 to the nearest minute, with time intervals (3.MD.A.1).