Best telling the time apps for kids

Telling the Time Ages 6-8: Andrew Brodie Basics, £3.99, Apple

The second in the Andrew Brodie Basics time teaching series is aimed at children in Years 1 and 2.

Building on Telling The Time Ages 4-5 (reviewed above), it uses the same quiz format but features more complex time-telling concepts. For example, questions include, ‘How many minutes in two hours?;’ ‘How many days in four weeks?’ and moving the numbers on a digital clock to match the time shown on an analogue clock.

Your child is tested on telling the time to smaller intervals, including five past/to, 10 past/to and quarter past/to. When they change the time on the analogue clock face, the hands move together, rather than separately, helping to familiarise your child with the way they move in relation to each other.

There’s also a detailed results area which not only gives your child’s scores in the tasks they’ve tried, but also their scores per question type, letting you identify which skills they need to work on.

Tic Toc Time, £3.99, Apple and Android

Tic Toc Time is designed not just to teach children to read a clock, but to understand the science behind how we tell the time. It involves working through interactive games and tasks in sequence, taking your child through the various concepts that time-telling is based on.

The first stage – The Compass – introduces the four points of the compass and how they relate to the sun’s position in the sky. Holding their phone or tablet, your child has to turn around to find the compass points. Next, The Sun and The Shadow explores the relationship between shadows and the sun, including reading a sundial.

Your child is then introduced to the 24-hour clock face and the concepts of AM and PM before building their own clock by dragging the numbers and hands into position. Only then do they begin to complete time-telling activities, including dragging the hands to a given time position (with the movement of the small hand introduced first), and stop the clock challenges that involve matching analogue and digital times.

Aimed at five- to eight-year-olds, this app isn’t a quick fix as your child has to work through the steps in sequence, but it’s great for enquiring minds who love to understand the reasoning behind what they’re learning.

iR Telling Time, 99p, Apple and Android

Developed by Primary Games Ltd, which produces a whole range of curriculum-linked maths apps, iR Telling Time will help your child become faster and more confident with reading and setting an analogue clock.

Each round involves your child being given either five questions, or 10 in later levels. They are either given a time in words (e.g. five minutes past twelve) or as a digital reading on a 24-hour clock (e.g. 22:30); they must then set the clock to the right time by pressing buttons to jump forwards or backwards in one-minute, five-minute and one-hour intervals. Each level is timed so they can challenge themselves to beat their previous scores.

The app, although basic, is a good way to help your child get to grips with how to convert times on the 24-hour clock to analogue, a key skill that is taught in Year 4.

Mingoville Fun Clock, £2.99, Apple and Android

Featuring the colourful Jonathan the flamingo, Mingoville Fun Clock is great for kids who are just beginning to tell the time. It doesn’t just get them to practise reading and setting clocks, but also has child-friendly animations that explain how to tell the time on both analogue and digital clocks.

Once your child has watched and understood the videos, they can tackle a selection of different time-telling activities, including building their own clock. One involves tilting the phone or tablet to roll balls corresponding to numbers to the correct position on a clock face; another requires them to choose the right time from a choice of three to make the school bus depart.

With lots of ways to interact, this app will make learning to tell the time fun, with a logical progression through four levels, from telling the time to the hour to reading clocks to one-minute intervals.

Telling Time for Kids by Alexandre Minard, £1.99, Apple

Primary school children are expected to have a sound knowledge of both the 12- and 24-hour clock. This app is ideal for children who can already tell the time, helping them learn how digital times appear on analogue clocks.

The app gives your child a digital time that they then have to make on the analogue clock above by dragging the hands into the right position. But they have to show whether it’s a day or night time by making sure the sky scene at the top of the screen corresponds to the time on their clock. For example, at 11.15, a bright blue sunny sky appears; for 23.15, it’s black and starry.

An alternative game shows a time on a clock face, with the corresponding day or night sky; your child then has to drag the right numbers onto a digital clock, using the 24-hour clock. With two quiz modes and a practice section where your child can create their own times on an analogue clock and see how the digital one appears, or vice versa, this app will help them become fluent with reading both the 12- and 24-hour clocks.