Drag the hands, read the clock, and solve time puzzles. Learn o'clock, half past, quarter past, quarter to and more.
Start here. A clock has two hands. The short, gold hand is the hour hand. The long, blue hand is the minute hand. When the minute hand points straight up at the 12, it is an o'clock time, and the hour hand points at the hour. At 3 o'clock the hour hand points at the 3.
Half and quarter. The minute hand takes one hour to go all the way around. Half way round (at the 6) is half past. A quarter of the way (at the 3) is quarter past. Three quarters of the way (at the 9) is quarter to the next hour.
Count in fives. There are 60 small marks around the clock, one for every minute. Each number is 5 minutes after the one before: the 1 is 5 minutes, the 2 is 10 minutes, the 3 is 15 minutes, and so on. In the first half of the hour we say past (ten past three is 3:10). In the second half we say to the next hour (twenty to four is 3:40).
The hour hand moves too. The hour hand does not jump. It creeps slowly while the minutes go by. At half past three it sits half way between the 3 and the 4. At quarter to four it is almost at the 4.
How long? To work out how much time has passed, count on from the start. From 8:15 to 9:00 is 45 minutes. A good way is to add whole hours first, then the minutes.
Try this above. In Play, drag the minute hand all the way round once. What happens to the hour hand? Set the clock to quarter to five and check where each hand points.
The short one. In this game it is gold. The long blue hand shows the minutes.
In the first half of the hour the time is past the hour that just went by, like ten past three. In the second half it is to the hour that is coming, like ten to four. Half past is the middle.
AM is the time from midnight to noon (morning). PM is the time from noon to midnight (afternoon and night). A clock face only goes up to 12, so AM and PM tell us which half of the day it is.
Pick the level, not the age. "Just starting" has o'clock and half past. "I know the basics" adds quarter past, quarter to and every 5 minutes. "Challenge me" uses any minute and harder time puzzles.
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