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Maths · Every game

Telling the Time on a Clock Face

Reading a real clock face, beginning with o’clock and half past — the two a child needs before any of the others make sense.

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What it teaches

Reading an analogue clock. The hands are the whole difficulty: the short one moves slowly and means the hour, the long one moves quickly and means the minutes, and they look nothing alike in importance despite the long one being easier to see.

Starting at o’clock and half past is deliberate. Those two are learned as pictures, and everything else is built on them.

How it works

A clock face is drawn on the screen and the child picks the time. The face is a real one with both hands, not a simplified diagram, because a simplified clock teaches a child to read a clock that does not exist.

On a wrong answer the hour hand is highlighted on its own, then the minute hand, so the two are separated before the answer is given.

What to look for

The classic mistake is reading half past three as half past four, because the hour hand has already moved past the three. It is the right instinct applied to the wrong hand, and it is worth pointing at rather than correcting.

When o’clock and half past are reliable, Setting the clock is the harder companion game.

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