Before digital clocks were invented, people all told time with analog clocks.
Analog clocks are still everywhere!
They look like this:
Analog clocks tell the time of day in hours and minutes.
They have a short hand, and a long hand.
The short hand tells about the hours. The long hand tells about the minutes.
Tip: Some analog clocks even have a thin red hand! It tells about the seconds. It moves way faster than the other hands, so it's easy to tell it's not the minute hand.
1 day = 24 hours
1 hour = 60 minutes
1 minute = 60 seconds
👆 Memorize those!
Hours are long, minutes are short, and seconds are very short.
10:00 - 11:00 is an hour long. That's how long your Math class is.
12:00 - 1:00 is also an hour long. That's how long your lunch break is.
Here's what an analog clock looks like at regular speed:
The red second hand ticks every second!
The second hand is the only hand that looks like it's moving, but the other hands are moving too, just very slowly!
Here's what an analog clock looks like with the time sped up:
The hour hand moves the slowest. In one day, it moves all the way around the clock only twice!
Here's what it looks like with time sped up even faster!
Every hour, the short hour hand moves just a bit around the clock.
Every hour, the long minute hand moves all the way around the clock!
The short hand points to 10, the long hand points to 12.
The short hand is the hour hand. It points to the current hour.
The long hand is the minute hand. It tells us how many minutes have gone by after 10.
At the top of every hour, the minute hand will always point to 12. It tells us that zero minutes have gone by after 10.
This is called 10 o'clock.
The short hour hand is really useful. It always points to the exact time.
👉 When the hour hand points exactly at 1, it's 1 o'clock, or 1:00!
Tip: We've hidden the minute hand here 👆
At 2:00, the hour hand will point exactly at the 2!
🤔 Where do you think the hour hand will point when it's half an hour after 1 o'clock?
Tip: Half an hour is 30 minutes.
Yes, at 1:30 the hour hand points exactly halfway between 1 and 2!
The hour hand is really precise! It tells us the exact time.
Where do you think the hour hand points at 1:10?
🙈 Wow, telling time with only the hour hand is getting hard!
Is it pointing to 1:10, or 1:15? Who knows! The space is too tiny.
🤔 Is there an easier way to see how many minutes have passed since the top of the hour?
👉 Yes! That's why we have the minute hand!
The minute hand moves all the way around the clock every hour. This is the hand that's longer than the hour hand.
The minute hand makes it easier to see if it's 1:10, or 1:15, or even 1:12!
In 2nd grade, we learned to read the minute hand to tell half hours. We also learned to tell quarter hours.
If you don't remember how to tell half-hours, and quarter-hours, review those lessons.👆
In 3rd grade, we'll go one step further and learn to tell the exact time for any minute in the day!
Now let's look at the minute hand again. 😺
In 5 minutes, the minute hand moves this far:
Important: Even though the minute hand points to 1, it doesn't mean the minutes is :01!
The minute hand is actually pointing at the 60 little tick marks all around the clock!
If the minute hand points to a number, multiply that number by 5 to get the minutes!
So if the minute hand points to the 1, it's 5 minutes past the top of the hour!
Let's look at a clock with only the minute hand:
How many minutes have passed since the top of the hour?
The minute hand points to the 2.
But we know the minutes isn't :02!
👉 If the minute hand points exactly at a number, we multiply it by 5 to get the minutes.
2 x 5 = 10
So 10 minutes have gone by since the top of the hour. 👍
You can check if that's correct by counting all the little tick marks between the 12 and 2. There are 10 of them, one for each minute!
Let's try another example:
How many minutes have passed since the top of the hour? 🤔
That's right!
8 x 5 = 40
So 40 minutes have passed! 😺
Now what happens if the minute hand is somewhere between two numbers, like this:
It looks like the time in minutes is greater than :05, and less than :10.
How can we tell what minute it is exactly? 🤔
We use the small tick marks around the edge of the clock to tell the exact minutes.
There are 60 tick marks around the clock, one tick mark per minute.
So in the clock above, how many ticks marks have we passed since the top of the hour?
Yes! We've passed 7 tick marks. So the time is 7 minutes past the hour.
Now, what if the minute hand points here:
Counting all those little tick mark will take forever! 🙉
So let's make it easier.
👉 First let's skip count our way by 5 along the clock until we get close to the minute hand:
Now, we see that 3 more tick marks have passed since the time was :40.
We know that 40 + 3 = 43.
So 43 minutes have passed since the top of the hour! Great job! 🎉
Super tip: Instead of skip counting by 5, you can multiply by 5 to tell the time even faster!
In the clock above, you could multiply the nearest number by 5:
8 x 5 = 40
We add 3 tick marks to 40, and we get the same answer: 43 minutes!
Now let's try to tell both the hour and minute hand at the same time.
To tell the exact time, first figure out the hour, then the minutes.
Let's try some examples. What time does this clock show? 👇
First, let's figure out the hour by looking at the short hour hand.
It's pointing a little after 3, which means the hour is still 3!
Tip: The hour doesn't change to 4 until the hour hand is all the way on top of the 4.
Now that we know the hour, let's figure out the minutes.
The long minute hand is pointing to the 1. Multiply that number by 5 to get the minutes!
1 x 5 = 5
So the time is 3:05! You would say, "It's three o'five". Great job!
Remember: The minute hand is really pointing at the number of ticks on the outside of the clock.
Let's try one more example:
First, what hour is it?
Yes! The short hour hand is between the 7 and 8, so the hour is 7! 👍
Now what minute is it? 🤔
👉 Let's try our super trick: multiply a nearby number by 5 and add or subtract ticks to get the exact minutes.
The minute hand is closest to 11.
What's 11 x 5?
Yes it's 55.
The minute hand is 1 tick mark behind the 11. So we subtract one minute away from 7:55.
So what's the time?
✅ Yes! It's 7:54!
Great job! The more you practice, the better you'll get.
Now try reading analog clocks on your own. 😺 You'll have it down in no time (pun intended 😂).