🕰️ Telling the Time
Take hold of the hands and move them. Watch the hour hand creep along as you swing the big one round — that is what is really going on inside a clock.
The clock
10:10
ten past ten
Drag the hands and watch what the time is called.
Question—
Right0
What to do
Which way round
How hard
How to Use It
- Moving the hands
- Press anywhere on the clock and drag. It takes hold of whichever hand you were nearest. Swing the long hand all the way round and watch the short one move on by one hour — the two are joined, and that is why.
- Why the hour hand is never quite on the number
- At half past three it sits halfway between the 3 and the 4, because half the hour has gone. Most drawings of clocks get this wrong and leave it sitting on the 3, which is why so many children read half past three as half past four.
- Why 3:45 is "quarter to four"
- Once you are past the half hour you stop counting from the hour you are in and start counting to the next one. The clock still shows 3, but there are fifteen minutes to go until 4, so it is quarter to four. This is the single most confusing thing about clocks and it is worth saying out loud a few times.
- The three things you can do
- Have a play — move the hands and read what it is called. Read the clock — it shows a time, you pick the words. Set the clock — it gives you the words, you move the hands.
- How hard
- Start at o'clock and half past. Then quarters, then every five minutes, then any minute at all. There is no hurry — quarters alone will get you through most of a school year.
- The best-times board
- Only a round with all ten right goes on it.