Helping your child learn to tell the time, from o'clock to the 24-hour clock

To teach a child to tell the time, start with o'clock and half past on an analogue clock, then add five-minute steps, quarter past and quarter to, and only then minutes and the 24-hour clock.

That order is the one schools follow in England. The national curriculum sets o'clock and half past in Year 1, five-minute steps in Year 2, the nearest minute and the 24-hour clock in Year 3, and conversions between analogue and digital in Year 4. This guide takes each step in turn, with a short activity for home, the mistakes that come up most often and a table to keep by the clock.

What telling the time looks like from Year 1 to Year 4

The national curriculum for England, published by the Department for Education on GOV.UK, spreads telling the time over four school years. The statutory objectives below come from its programmes of study for Key Stages 1 and 2.

The same programmes add the vocabulary around the clock: before and after, morning, afternoon and evening, the days of the week and the months in Year 1; am and pm, noon and midnight, the seconds in a minute and the days in each month in Year 3. A child who is behind the class on one step is better served by going back to it than by moving on.

Start with o'clock and half past

The curriculum's own guidance for Year 1 gives the order: children use the language of time throughout the day, "first using o'clock and then half past". At this stage, the only rule your child needs is about the long hand. When it points straight up to the 12, it is something o'clock, and the short hand gives the hour. When it points straight down to the 6, it is half past, and the short hand has moved halfway to the next number.

Tie each time to something that happens every day: breakfast at 7 o'clock, the end of school at half past 3, bath time at 6 o'clock. Ask "What time is it?" only when the long hand is on the 12 or the 6, so every question has an answer your child can reach. Then swap roles: you say a time, and your child moves the hands of a toy clock or draws them on a blank clock face, which is exactly what the Year 1 objective asks for.

The short hand is the usual trap at half past. At half past 3, it sits between the 3 and the 4, and many children read it as 4. Point out that it has not reached the 4 yet, so the hour is still 3.

Counting in fives for quarter past, quarter to and every five minutes

Year 2 moves to five-minute steps, and it leans on another Year 2 objective: counting in steps of 5 from 0. Each number on the clock face is five minutes further round than the one before, so the minutes past the hour are the 5 times table: the 1 is 5 minutes, the 2 is 10, the 3 is 15, and so on up to the 11, which is 55. A child who knows the table can read any five-minute time by counting the numbers the long hand has passed.

Quarter past and quarter to make more sense with turns. The Year 1 programme already asks children to make quarter, half and three-quarter turns and to connect turning clockwise with movement on a clock face, and the Department for Education's mathematics guidance for primary schools relates a quarter turn to the quarter turn of a clock hand in its Year 3 chapter. Show it with the long hand: from the 12 to the 3 is a quarter of the way round, so quarter past; at the 9, three quarters have gone and one quarter is left before the next hour, so quarter to.

Two facts belong to this year too: 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day. Ask how many minutes there are between 4 o'clock and half past 4, then between half past 4 and 5 o'clock, and let your child find 30 and 30 again.

Reading an analogue clock to the nearest minute

In Year 3, children read the analogue clock to the nearest minute, including clocks with Roman numerals from I to XII. The method builds on the fives: count in fives up to the last number the long hand has passed, then count the small marks one by one. If the long hand is two marks after the 7, that is 35 and 2, so 37 minutes past.

After the 6, English switches from "past" to "to". The table gives every five-minute position: print it and keep it near the clock.

The "to" half is where most errors come from, because the hour in the sentence is the next one. At 4:45 the short hand is closer to the 5 than to the 4, and that gives a useful check: the hour you say after "to" is the number the short hand is heading for.

Moving on to the 24-hour clock

Year 3 introduces 12-hour and 24-hour clocks, with am and pm, noon and midnight, and Year 4 asks children to convert between analogue and digital 12- and 24-hour times. The rule is short: in the morning the hours stay the same, from 1 pm you add 12 to the hour, and midnight is 00:00. So 3:45 pm is 15:45, and 19:20 is 7:20 pm, or twenty past 7 in the evening.

Timetables make good practice material: a bus or train timetable, the start times on a cinema website, the times in a TV guide. Ask your child to say each one as an analogue time and to work out how long something lasts: a film from 17:50 to 19:35 lasts 1 hour 45 minutes. Year 4 is also the year of the multiplication tables check, so a few minutes of times tables and a few minutes of clock reading fit well in the same short daily routine.

Helping a child tell the time without frustration

A few habits make the learning lighter:

• Keep an analogue clock where your child can see it, at their eye level, and ask the time at real moments rather than in a drill.
• One step at a time. Do not add quarter to before half past is secure: the curriculum spreads these steps over several school years.
• Say the time both ways once your child reads digital displays: 7:45 and quarter to 8. Children who only read the digits often cannot say how long is left before 8 o'clock.
• Use durations. "We leave in 15 minutes: where will the long hand be?" turns the clock into a tool.
• Keep sessions short. Five minutes a few times a week is easier to keep up than a long session at the weekend.

If your child gets stuck, ask them to explain how they read the clock rather than giving the answer: you will see at once whether the problem is the hands, the counting in fives or the switch from past to to. Our guide to helping with maths homework uses the same approach for other topics.

Frequently asked questions

When do children learn to tell the time at school?

In England, the national curriculum sets o'clock and half past in Year 1, five-minute steps with quarter past and quarter to in Year 2, the nearest minute and the 24-hour clock in Year 3, and conversions between analogue and digital times in Year 4.

Should a child learn the analogue or the digital clock first?

Start with the analogue clock. The curriculum builds fluency on analogue clocks in Year 2 before moving to digital 12-hour and 24-hour clocks, and the clock face shows how much of the hour has gone.

How do you explain quarter past and quarter to?

Use turns of the long hand: from the 12 to the 3 is a quarter of the way round, so quarter past; at the 9, a quarter is left before the next hour, so quarter to.

How do you convert a time to the 24-hour clock?

Keep morning hours as they are and add 12 to the hour from 1 pm: 3:45 pm becomes 15:45. Midnight is 00:00 and noon is 12:00.

Why can my child read 7:45 but not quarter to 8?

Because 'to' uses the next hour and counts the minutes left, not the minutes gone. Practise saying digital times both ways, and check that the short hand is heading for the hour you say.