How to teach telling time, step by step
Most children learn to tell time in the same order: first o’clock, then half past, then quarter past and quarter to, then every five minutes, and finally any minute. Each level here matches one of those steps, so a sheet never asks for more than your class has learned.
Two kinds of practice
Read the clock
Children look at where the hands point and write the time. This builds reading the hour hand first, then the minute hand.
Draw the hands
Children see a time such as 7:30 and draw both hands. It is harder than reading, because they have to remember that the hour hand sits between the numbers once the minutes pass the hour.
Provincial curriculum links
- ON Grade 1Time starts with the calendar: how days, weeks and months are organized.
- ON Grade 2Timers and clocks are used to measure how much time has passed.
- ON Grade 3Students learn to tell time on both digital and analog clocks.
- BC Grade 3–4Grade 3 relates seconds, minutes, hours and days without expecting clock reading; Grade 4 reads analog and digital clocks to the nearest minute, including 24-hour time.
Telling time shows how much the provinces can differ. Ontario places clock reading in Grade 3, while BC holds it until Grade 4 and pairs it with a.m., p.m. and the 24-hour clock. In BC, the o’clock and half past levels can be enrichment in Grade 3, and the five-minute and any-minute levels match Grade 4.
The clocks on these sheets are analog with a 12-hour face, so 24-hour time is worth adding with a quick class discussion of train or flight schedules.
Summarized in our own words from Ontario’s overview of The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1–8: Mathematics (2020) and the BC Mathematics curriculum (Grades 3 and 4).
