Clock Trainer

How to use it

Step 1: choose a mode.

• Explore is a playground. Drag the short hand or the long hand, tap on the clock, or use the buttons. The digital time and the words change as you go, and a short lesson tells you how to read what you see.
• Read the clock shows you a clock and four choices. Pick the words that match. You can also press 1, 2, 3 or 4 on a keyboard.
• Set the clock tells you a time, such as quarter past 2. Move the hands to show it, then tap Check. If it is not right, you get a hint about which hand to fix and one more go.

Step 2: choose a level. There are 5 levels, and you can start on any of them:

1. O'clock. The long hand points straight up at the 12.
2. Half past. Adds half past, with the long hand pointing straight down at the 6.
3. Quarter past and quarter to. Adds the 3 and the 9.
4. 5-minute steps. Times such as 10 past 4 and 25 to 9.
5. Any minute. Every little mark on the clock. This level can also use digital times such as 3:25, or 24-hour times such as 15:25.

Step 3: play a round. A round is 10 clocks. A clock scores a point when you get it right the first time. You earn one star for finishing a round, two stars for 7 or more points and three stars for 9 or more. The best score for each level is kept on this device.

The Minute numbers switch adds 5, 10, 15 and so on around the edge of the clock. They help when you count minutes.

Why it works

Telling the time is tricky because a clock asks you to read two hands at once, and they do different jobs. The short hand shows the hour. The long hand shows the minutes. The long hand goes all the way round once every hour, while the short hand takes 12 hours to go round once.

Each number on the face also has two meanings. The 3 means 3 for the short hand, but it means 15 minutes for the long hand. Counting in 5s helps a lot: the 1 is 5 minutes, the 2 is 10, the 3 is 15, and so on up to the 12, which is 60 minutes. That is why 12 × 5 = 60.

The hands are joined together, like the hands of a real clock. At half past 3 the short hand is not on the 3. It is halfway between the 3 and the 4, because half of the hour has gone by. When you drag the long hand past the 12, the short hand moves on to the next hour. Watching this happen is the best way to understand it.

A clock is also a picture of fractions. A quarter past is a quarter of the way round the clock, because 15 minutes is a quarter of 60. Half past is halfway round. The shaded slice in Explore shows the minutes that have gone by in the hour.

Past and to depend on the side of the clock. When the long hand is on the right, the minutes are going up, so we say past. When it is on the left, we count the minutes left until the next hour, so we say to. A clock showing 8:35 says 25 to 9, because 35 + 25 = 60.

The 24-hour clock goes on counting after 12 instead of starting again. For afternoon and evening times you add 12 hours, so 3 pm is 15:00 and 8:30 pm is 20:30. Midnight is 00:00.

For parents and teachers

The Trainer is written for Years 1 to 4. Many schools begin with o'clock and half past in Year 1, add quarter past and quarter to in Year 2, and move on to five minutes and then single minutes in Years 3 and 4. Digital and 24-hour times often come a little later. Ask your child's teacher which level matches their class.

The wrong choices in Read the clock are the mistakes that children often make: the wrong hour, past and to mixed up, and the two hands swapped over. When a child picks a wrong answer, the Trainer shows the right one and a short lesson on how to read it.

Ideas to try away from the screen:

• Ask What will the clock say in 10 minutes? and check on Explore with the +5 buttons.
• Use a real clock at home. Say the time out loud at breakfast, at the school gate and at bedtime.
• Ask your child to explain how they know the long hand is on the 8: Count in 5s.
• Make a paper plate clock with two hands that join in the middle, so they can feel how the hands move together.

The Trainer works with touch, mouse and keyboard. To use the keyboard, press Tab to reach a hand, then use the arrow keys to move it. Every button has a label for screen readers, and in Read the clock the position of the hands is described in words.

Progress is stored only in this browser, on this device, and is not sent anywhere. Children who share a device share the same stars, and clearing the browser's site data starts again from scratch.