Elapsed timeUp to 90 minutes
Name: Date:
Write the time it was before the minutes given.
125 min7:30
280 min3:05
360 min12:50
410 min9:50
585 min3:55
615 min11:50
730 min1:40
875 min2:50
Finding the start time worksheets
You know when something ended and how long it ran — so when did it begin? These free printable sheets ask the backward question of elapsed time, a finish time minus an interval, and answer with a clock time.
Kid stuck on one? You don’t just get the sheet.
Finding the start time
The answer key prints on a separate page.
What's on this sheet
Working backward is the one children find hardest, and it is the one that shows whether the forward version was understood or copied. A film ends at 4:00 and ran 45 minutes, so it started at 3:15 — found by counting back, not forward from a guess. Counting back to the last whole hour first, then taking off the rest, is the method the page is built to reward.
Why this sheet works
Crossing the hour is still the whole difficulty, now going down instead of up. 4:00 take away 45 minutes borrows an hour and turns it into sixty minutes before the subtraction works, the same base-sixty carry as the forward sheets, met from the other side. Questions that cross the hour and questions that do not are drawn as separate groups, so a page never fills with the comfortable kind.
How this one works
One question from this sheet, worked through a step at a time.
7:30 − 25 min
- It ends at 7:30 after 25 minutes. Hop BACKWARDS the same way; counting back is what stops the hour from being borrowed.
- It all fits inside the one hour, so it is a single hop of 25 minutes backwards — no o'clock to cross.
- So it started at 7:05.