These fun telling time games are the perfect way for kids to gather the skills they need to learn to tell time with a traditional clock or watch.
Here at Kids Activities Blog, we always prefer learning through games and hands-on telling time activities! Playing with time is so much fun.
We have published a lot of popular learning games, but this tell time post has been sharing thousands of times through the years as it was named by Pinterest as one of the Top 20 Pins of 2013 for Education and Classroom Ideas. We are absolutely giddy and hope you will share it too!
Let’s choose one of these telling time games to play!
Telling Time Games for Kids
These Tell Time games are sure to make your day a little more fun for your little ones. The challenge with learning to tell times is kids have to be familiar with:
- Numbers 1-12 & 0-60
- Skip counting by 5’s, 10’s & 15’s
- Concept of time – seconds, minutes, hours…
- Ability to identify, calculate and then express
When you think about it, time is complicated! It is something that we use so often throughout the day that we might not even think about all the moving pieces that come together to allow us to tell time and say it so someone else understands what we are talking about.
Telling Time as Part of Hands-on Math
As part of our home learning schedule, we try to focus on one area of “extra” hands-on math skills each school day. Here is our schedule to include telling time in addition to our regular math worksheets and math homework:
- Mondays: Play with more/less statements — these can get really silly & fun!
- Tuesdays: Hands-on clock practice and talking through telling time to each other.
- Wednesdays: Is backwards day! We count backwards as we drive places, wait in lines, sit at the table and take a bath!
- Thursdays: All about money. We count money and play store games.
- Fridays: Fun & play with math – my kids’ favorite play time choice is Lego math or some building activity.
Kids Activities Blog is excited to share with you these fun telling time activities to do today to help you child understand the concept of time. 
Telling Time Activities & Games to Teach How to Tell Time
Here are 10 of the ideas we’ve found to help us with our Tuesday math & extra telling time learning…
Make a playdough globe to introduce time zones.
As you find hours on your “clock”, put a stick into your globe about the area that you think it would be that time. Discuss how time is different in different places. Thanks to A Little Learning for inspiring this earth activity – they used things they are thankful for on their “sticks”.
Count down to a big event using clocks.
Countdown to a big event like New Years Eve using clocks to introduce the countdown. Hoosier Homemade made a bag of treats that her kids could open up, one on each hour as they counted down to midnight. This would be a great “telling time” activity for a long road-trip too!
Have kids wear a watch.
The act of wearing a watch has helped give my children a concept of time pretty quickly. I love the (affiliate links present in this article) “Time Teaching” watches. These have the hours and the minutes on the face to help your child learn to differentiate between the hours and minutes. It is funny but most kids don’t get used to wearing a watch these days because all the adults around them have their phone in hand with a digital clock.
Make a giant clock with kids as the “hands”.
Make a giant clock outside on your driveway like the kids over at Who Would Have Thought It. They used their bodies to make the time. What fun to see the time change…looks like a blast!
Make a paper plate clock with movable hands so kids can practice reading the time!
Interactive Clock Games for Telling Time
Play with paper plate clocks.
I first saw a version of the clock pictured above at Mrs. Nielsen’s 2nd grade. She cut flaps into her paper plate that she could lift the hour and show her kids the minutes. Brilliant! We had to make our own paper plate clock (pictured above). The kids love it.
Use printable clock worksheets.
Here is a terrific telling time worksheet that we have used to help our kids diagram time. Put it in a page protector and use with dry erase markers to ask questions like:
- What time did you eat breakfast this morning?
- What time is one hour earlier than breakfast?
- When is bedtime?
- What time do you get up in the morning?
- What time do we leave for school?
Practice skip counting.
The part that is the hardest for my kiddos is learning the hour “number” with the minuets – ex: 8 = 40 minuets. Skip counting has really helped them figure it out! SchoolHouse Rock has a fun song where they skip count as fast as they can their 5’s. The kids love counting & singing along.
Sing your skip counting with SchoolHouse Rock:
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Make a clock wall for kids.
We used cardboard boxes to create clocks with the common events of our day on the face.
Our daily events included:
-
- morning snack time
- time they can get up from naps
- time that Daddy is home from work
- bedtime
This helps my toddlers know to match the time. For example, “You can’t get up from quiet time until 4pm, when the clock looks like this (pointing to the correct time)”.
Create a clock wall that shows the times for regularly scheduled events – just like a time zone wall at an office!
Work with different types of time notation.
Help your child realize that time is documented in many formats. Teach Mama has a great collection of worksheets and lesson plans to help your child see the big picture.
Have a telling time race.
I remember as a child in classes, I loved the wipe-board activities. This is a board that you can purchase to have time-telling races with each other. .
More Time, Clock & Schedule Fun from Kids Activities Blog
- We love this idea for a routine clock, a visual reminder of a kids schedule. You can easily make this school clock that could be used for all sorts of different kid routines.
- We talked about counting down to a special event…here is a Christmas countdown clock to keep kids anticipating AND counting!
- Need help keeping track of a Kindergarten homeschool schedule? Check out these ideas for things that really work!
- We have some mom-tested, kid-tested kids schedule ideas that really work in the real world.
- And if you have a preschooler at home, check out our easy to follow preschool schedule.
Now that you have learned how to read a clock, let’s work on how to read a thermometer with this fun kids printable, craft & learning activity!
