Interactive teaching clock

What a teaching clock is

A teaching clock is a clock face with hands a child can move. The one on this page works like a real clock: drag the minute hand and the hour hand turns with it, a little at a time. You can also step the time forward or back by five minutes or by an hour, and choose whether the digital time shows underneath.

Why moving the hands helps

Reading an analog clock means holding two scales in your head at once. The short hand counts hours from 1 to 12, while the long hand counts minutes from 0 to 60 using the same numbers. That is genuinely confusing, and no amount of looking at pictures fixes it as fast as turning the hands yourself.

The most common mistake is reading the hour hand as the number it is nearest to. At 2:50 the hour hand is almost on the 3, and many children say "3:50". Dragging the minute hand from 2:00 to 3:00 shows the hour hand creeping the whole way between the numbers, so the child sees why it is still the 2 o'clock hour until the minute hand reaches the top.

Ideas by grade

In Common Core, standard 2.MD.C.7 asks second graders to tell and write time to the nearest five minutes using a.m. and p.m., and 3.MD.A.1 moves to the nearest minute and to time intervals. A rough path through the year looks like this.

• Grade 1: o'clock and half past. Set each time with the digital readout hidden, then reveal it to check.
• Grade 2: five-minute steps. Use the five-minute buttons and count by fives as the minute hand moves from number to number.
• Grade 2: a.m. and p.m. The clock face is the same, so talk through whether 7:15 means breakfast or the evening.
• Grade 3: the nearest minute. Drag the minute hand between the numbers to times like 4:23 or 11:58.
• Grade 3: elapsed time. Set a start time, predict the end time, then move the hands to check.

A 10-minute clock routine

• Hide the digital time. Set a time and ask the child to read it aloud, then show the digital time to check.
• Swap roles. Say a time such as "twenty past 6" and let the child drag the hands to it.
• Ask a question about the hour hand: "It is 5:45. Is the hour hand nearer the 5 or the 6? Why?"
• Finish with one elapsed-time question linked to their day, such as how long until dinner or bedtime.

Use the same words your child hears at home and school. In the US most people say "four thirty" or "a quarter after four". In the UK, children usually say "half past four" and "quarter past four". Both are correct, and it helps to know both.

Clocks and angles

Older children can use the clock to think about turns and angles. At 3:00 the hands make a right angle, and at 6:00 they make a straight line. Each minute mark is 6 degrees, since 360 degrees divided by 60 minutes is 6, which turns a clock face into a handy protractor for mental math.

After the clock

Telling time is a skill on Eurekami's skill map, and Daily Practice brings it back for review when it starts to fade. When a time word problem is tricky, the AI tutor asks guiding questions about the start time and how much time passes, so the child does the reasoning.