Acquiring the ability to tell the time on an analogue clock face is a fundamental skill that can promote a child’s cognitive development.
Despite the increase of digital timekeeping, playing ‘telling time games’, especially analogue clock games, can be a great way of supporting and reinforcing a child’s learning. They can help to provide a basis for more complex mathematical and scientific concepts. Teaching time shouldn’t be overlooked, and is still an important and relevant skill for a child to acquire.

Learning to tell the time introduces learners to several skills and concepts.
- Spatial reasoning (giving them the ability to understand relationships between space, direction, shape and size).
- An introduction to the passing of time as a concept, time-keeping, appointments, schedules and similar.
- Understanding rotation, clockwise and counterclockwise movement.
- Basic numeracy, counting and number recognition.
- An introduction to fractions.
- Critical thinking (by understanding the different components of a clock and their relationship to each other).
Instructions for playing the ‘telling the time’ game:
First, decide on a game mode. Then match the time shown to it’s analogue equivalent from the selection of clockfaces.
The game modes are:
- 12 hour clock
- 24 hour clock
- Words / Text
- Audio / Speech (requires sound)