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Telling the time

Need a telling the time within reach? Print it for the wall, then hand off to the practice sheets below.

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Telling the time — free printable reference chart

Reference chart

Telling the time

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Past the half hour, count to the next hour. The hand at :40 is twenty to four, not twenty past three — so the hour you say is the one the short hand is heading for.

What each five minutes on the clock is called
MinutesWe sayMinutesWe say
:00o'clock:30half past
:05five past:35twenty-five to
:10ten past:40twenty to
:15quarter past:45quarter to
:20twenty past:50ten to
:25twenty-five past:55five to
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What's on this chart

Nearly every child who cannot tell the time can count to sixty and can read to twelve. What nobody has shown them is that an analog clock asks for both at once off the same twelve marks: the 3 means three o'clock to the short hand and fifteen minutes to the long one. One dial, two scales, and only one of them is printed on an ordinary clock.

Why this chart helps

This chart prints the other one. The minutes ring the face in fives, directly outside the hour they share a mark with, so the link a child is expected to hold in their head is sitting there on the paper instead. Once it is visible, reading the minutes stops being recall and becomes counting, which is something a five-year-old can already do.