Short hand = Hours
Long hand = Minutes
10:00AM
ten o'clock in the morning
Drag the hands of the clock to set any time. Then scroll down to play the clock game.
Pick your level and earn stars! Get 5 questions right to win.
Easy ways to explain the clock, plus exactly what to say to make it click.
Start with just the hour hand first. Hide the minute hand with your finger. Whatever number it points to (or the number it just passed) is the hour. Master this before adding minutes.
The minute hand doesn't say what number it points at. It says that number times 5. Practice counting around: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30. Turn it into a song.
Imagine the clock as a pizza cut into 4 slices. Top-right slice is "quarter past." Bottom-right is "half past." Bottom-left is "quarter to." Turn on Color Zones above to see it.
"Half past 3" means 30 minutes after 3 (so 3:30). "Quarter to 4" means 15 minutes before 4 (so 3:45). The little word, past or to, tells you which hour to use.
The hour hand doesn't stay still. It slowly slides toward the next number as the minutes pass. At 3:30, it's halfway between 3 and 4. Point this out, since kids often miss it!
Ask "what time is it?" at meals, before TV, at bedtime. Use phrases like "in 15 minutes" and check the clock together. Real moments stick better than worksheets.
From parents and teachers using this site at home and in class.
Most children are ready to learn time on the hour and half hour around age 5 or 6 (kindergarten and first grade). Quarter hours come next around age 6 to 7, and reading time to the nearest five minutes is typically a second or third grade skill. The four levels in our game (Sprout, Sapling, Tree, Star) are designed to match this progression.
Yes. The skills practiced here cover the time-telling expectations in 1.MD.B.3 (tell and write time in hours and half-hours), 2.MD.C.7 (tell and write time to the nearest five minutes), and 3.MD.A.1 (tell and write time to the nearest minute and solve word problems involving addition and subtraction of time intervals).
Yes, completely free. No ads, no tracking, no signup, no in-app purchases. There is an optional donation panel for families who want to support the project, but nothing is gated. Designed to be safe to leave open on a tablet or laptop for kids.
The voice comes from your device's built-in text-to-speech, and quality varies. If it sounds rough, tap "Choose voice" in the game card and pick one labeled "Natural" or "Premium." On a Mac or iPad, you can download a Premium voice for free in Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → System Voice. On Windows, opening the site in Microsoft Edge gives you access to neural voices like Aria.
Start with just the hour hand. Cover the minute hand with your finger and ask "what hour does the short hand point to?" Once that's solid, introduce the half hour, then quarter hours, then five-minute intervals. Use real moments throughout the day ("dinner is at six, what time is it now?") rather than only worksheets. The teaching tips section above has specific phrases you can read aloud to your child.
This is the most common stumble. Two tricks that help: (1) say "the short hand has the short job, the long hand has the long count," and (2) turn on the Color zones helper above so the four quarters are visually distinct. Once kids see the long hand sweeping through pizza-slice colors, the hour-vs-minute distinction clicks faster.
Yes. The clock face is fully touch-draggable and the layout adapts to small screens. Many parents pin Learn Clock Time to the home screen on an iPad — tap the share icon in Safari and choose "Add to Home Screen." It then opens like an app, full-screen, with no browser bars.
Eight: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, and Chinese. The time-in-words readout uses each language's natural conventions — for example, German "halb fünf" correctly means 4:30, and Spanish handles the singular "Es la una" for 1:00 and plural "Son las..." for other hours.