Clock Story – A Day in Pictures

Why Tell the Time Through a Story?

A clock on its own is an abstract thing: two hands, twelve numbers and sixty little marks. A day is something every child already understands. They know that breakfast comes before the school bus, that recess is in the morning and that bath time is in the evening. The clock story joins the two. Every picture shows a moment in a child’s day with the clock beside it, so a time like 9.40 a.m. is not just a position of the hands but “recess at the canteen”. That makes it far easier to remember what the hands mean and to judge whether an answer makes sense.

The stories also give a natural reason to talk about a.m. and p.m. and about how long things take, which are the parts of the time topic children find hardest. When the question is “Homework starts at 3.05 p.m. and lasts 45 minutes. When does it end?”, a child can picture the afternoon and check that the answer is still before dinner.

How to Use This Page

1. Choose your year. P1, P2 or P3 changes the times in the story and the kind of questions asked.
2. Choose a story: a school day, a trip to the zoo, a birthday party or a school sports day.
3. Read the story. Step through the pictures with the Next button. Each picture shows its clock and says the time, so this is a gentle warm-up before any questions.
4. Answer questions. Choose 6 or 10 and press Start. The questions follow the story from morning to night. After each answer the page explains how to get it, using the hands of the clock or counting on along the hours.
5. Collect stars. Three stars for a round with every answer right first time. The best stars for each year and story are shown on the buttons and kept only in your own browser.
6. Make your own story and print a worksheet with an answer key, for practice away from the screen.

What Each Year Practises

The levels follow the usual order of the time topic in Singapore primary schools. Move up or down freely: a P2 child who is unsure can warm up with P1, and a confident P2 child can try P3.

• P1: telling the time to the hour and half hour. Questions ask which words match the clock (“7 o’clock”, “half past 7”), ask the child to drag the hands to show a time, and ask them to put four pictures of the day in time order by reading their clocks.
• P2: telling the time to 5 minutes, written the Singapore way as 7.35; quarter past and quarter to; and the use of a.m. and p.m. Children type the time a clock shows, set the hands to a time, choose the matching words, decide whether a moment in the story is a.m. or p.m., and order five pictures by their times.
• P3: time intervals in hours and minutes. Children find when an activity ends, when it started, and how long it lasted, often crossing the hour (3.40 p.m. to 4.15 p.m.) or crossing 12 noon, and change minutes into hours and minutes and back (95 minutes is 1 h 35 min).

Reading the Clock: the Hour Hand Trap

The most common mistake in telling the time is not with the minute hand but with the hour hand. On a real clock the short hand moves slowly all the time: at 7 o’clock it points straight at the 7, at half past 7 it is halfway between the 7 and the 8, and at 7.50 it is almost on the 8. Children who look for the nearest number read 7.50 as 8.50. The rule to teach is: the hour is the number the short hand has just gone past. It only becomes 8 o’clock when the long hand reaches the 12 again.

The clocks on this page are drawn like the school teaching clock: the short red hand for the hours, the long blue hand for the minutes, and small minute numbers round the inside on the clocks children set. When your child drags the long hand round, the short hand creeps forward too, exactly as it does on a real clock, and when the long hand passes the 12 the hour changes. Dragging the hands slowly from 7 o’clock to 8 o’clock and watching the short hand travel is the quickest way to cure the hour hand trap.

The second common mistake is counting the minutes in ones from the number the long hand points at: the 7 means 35 minutes, not 7. Counting in fives round the clock face (5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35) is the bridge, which is why P2 children should be fluent with the five times table before reading times to 5 minutes.

a.m., p.m., 12 Noon and 12 Midnight

a.m. is for times from 12 midnight until just before 12 noon: the morning. p.m. is for times from 12 noon until just before midnight: the afternoon, evening and night. The pictures help: the sky in each scene is pink at dawn, blue in the day, orange at sunset and dark at night, and the sun or moon moves across it as the day goes on. The page writes 12 noon and 12 midnight in words rather than as 12.00 p.m. and 12.00 a.m., the way most Singapore textbooks do, and it never asks whether 12 noon itself is a.m. or p.m.

Working Out How Long Something Takes

In P3 children meet time intervals, which are hard because time does not count in tens. After 3.55 p.m. comes 4.00 p.m., not 3.60. The method the page explains after every P3 answer is to count on to the next hour first, then in whole hours, then the minutes that are left. From 3.40 p.m. to 5.15 p.m.: 3.40 to 4.00 is 20 minutes, 4.00 to 5.00 is 1 hour, and 5.00 to 5.15 is 15 minutes, so the interval is 1 hour 35 minutes. Drawing this as hops along a time line is the picture most schools use, and the explanation on the screen follows the same hops.

Changing between minutes and hours and minutes rests on one fact: 1 hour is 60 minutes. So 1 h 25 min is 60 + 25 = 85 minutes, and 130 minutes is 60 + 60 + 10, which is 2 h 10 min. A common mistake is to treat 1 h 25 min as 125 minutes, as if there were 100 minutes in an hour.

Make Your Own Story

Children remember best what they make themselves. In the box above the guide, pick the pictures for your own day (waking up, school, swimming, piano, dinner, bedtime and more), drag each clock to the time you do it, and tap a.m. or p.m. The page puts the pictures in time order as you go, so if the dinner picture jumps in front of homework, the time needs another look. Write a name to make it, for example, Aisha’s Day. Print it as a picture story with a clock in every picture, followed by a page of empty clocks to draw the hands on, with the first page as the answers.

The Printable Worksheet

The Print a worksheet button makes a sheet for the year and story you chose, with fresh times every time. P1 sheets have clocks to read, empty clocks to draw the hands on and pictures to put in order. P2 sheets add times to 5 minutes and a.m. or p.m. sentences. P3 sheets have end times, start times, how-long questions and hours-and-minutes changes. The last page is an answer key, with the hands drawn on for the draw-the-hands clocks.

Tips for Parents and Teachers

• Talk about real times. Look at the kitchen clock at breakfast and dinner and say the time aloud the school way: “It is 7.15. Quarter past 7.”
• Ask for a reason. After a P3 answer, ask, “Does that make sense in the story?” An answer of 1.15 a.m. for the end of lunch should feel wrong.
• Use the hands, not only the numbers. When an answer is wrong, drag the hands together on the story clock and count the fives aloud.
• Little and often. One six-question round a day does more than an hour once a week. Fix the ones you missed before starting a new round.
• Mix screen and paper. A worksheet after a round on the screen shows whether the idea has stuck without the clock moving for you.

Nothing to Install, Nothing Uploaded

The clock story runs entirely in your browser on any phone, tablet or computer, with no account and no download. Your year, story, stars and own story are kept only in your own browser; answers are never sent to us.