Time

Read an analogue clock in words, 12-hour and 24-hour digital format, then work out how long something takes.

Curriculum rangeYears 1-6

Drag the sliders to move the hour and minute hands, then pick morning or afternoon/evening.

Hour

Minute

quarter past 2

12-hour clock: 2:15 pm

24-hour clock: 14:15

Learning notes

Time essentials

Keep these rules beside you while you explore and practise.

1Reading the hands

The short hand shows the hour; the long hand shows the minutes. The minute hand moves all the way round (60 minutes) for every hour the hour hand moves between numbers.

2Saying the time

o'clock, quarter past, half past and quarter to are the four key phrases. Beyond that, say the number of minutes past or to the hour.

312-hour and 24-hour clocks

An analogue clock face is ambiguous -- it can't show am or pm. The 12-hour clock adds am/pm to fix that; the 24-hour clock avoids the ambiguity by counting 0-23 straight through midnight to midnight.

To convert $12$ -hour to $24$ -hour: keep the hour for am (except $12\,\text{am}=00$ ), and add $12$ for pm (except $12\,\text{pm}=12$ ).

4Units of time

60\ \text{s} = 1\ \text{min}, \quad 60\ \text{min} = 1\ \text{h}, \quad 24\ \text{h} = 1\ \text{day}

5Working out a duration

Count on from the start time to the finish time, in convenient jumps (to the next hour, then in hours, then the remaining minutes).

💡7 days = 1 week, and most months have 30 or 31 days (except February, which has 28 -- or 29 in a leap year).