Home » Math Theory » Measurements and Time » Telling Time To The Nearest Minute

Note: this page contains legacy resources that are no longer supported. You are free to continue using these materials but we can only support our current worksheets, available as part of our membership offering.

Telling Time To The Nearest Minute

Telling and writing time to the nearest minute and measuring time intervals in minutes develops well with lots of practice.

Provide many opportunities often so that your children may investigate freely, examine extensively and formulate time relationships. These will be key to them developing confidence with time concepts.

When children are learning to tell time, the concept of the hour hand moving along with the minute and second hand is difficult for them to understand as these three hands move at different speeds. Using a real clock so that your children can see the hour, minute and second hands moving around the clock will help then to grasp the concept of telling time to the nearest second, minute and hour.

Warm Up

Try the Telling Time To the Nearest Five Minutes Worksheet and recap what your children already know about telling time. 

To help children make the connections with different times, they need to compare intervals of time. The following activities will fine tune their predicting skills and help them to see relationships between intervals of time.  Do the activities often so that your children may be taken to a deeper level of the understanding of time.

Sixty Seconds

Materials:
1. A kitchen egg timer that times at least 60 seconds; one minute.

Procedure;
1. Choose an activity to do for 60 seconds. e.g. hold your arms out at your sides, read a book, draw a picture, whistle, sing.
2. Repeat the 60 second activities often, in the car, at a red light, waiting in line, a commercial on TV, cleaning, cooking. Repetition will strengthen your children’s awareness of how long one minute is.

Down to the last minute

Objective: Your children will be able to read time to the minute.

Gather the following materials with your children.

  1. A journal or diary type book. Coiled books are easy to work in.
  2. An analog clock
  3. Pencil, eraser, color pencils or crayons
  4. Kitchen timer
  5. Metronome or pendulum
  6. Minute glass sand timer, (some game boards have them)
  7. A bell or some method of making a sound

Follow the steps below to help your children develop an understanding of time to the minute.

  1. Discuss with your children that every hour is made up of 60 minutes. Look at your clock that shows the hours 1:00 o’clock to 12:00 o’clock. Show your children all the little marks in between the numbers and count them. They tell us the minutes.
  2. By turning the dial on the back of your analog clock you can show the times you have discussed with your children. Give them a turn to turn the dial. Have them tell you times and show them on the clock too.

3rd Grade Telling Time Worksheets

Try the Telling Time To the Nearest Minute Worksheet and have your children match the Clock faces with the correct time.

Try the Showing Time To the Nearest Minute Worksheet and where your children should mark the hours and minutes hands on Clock faces to show the correct time.

Or have a game of Time Dominos for more practice with telling time to the nearest minute.

You will find lots more time worksheets here and you might also find these tips for helping your children with time helpful too.

Ongoing Activity

  1. Keep a journal of clocks observed by your children that they see out and about in your community. Your children can draw a picture of the clock and ask if there is a story behind it. If so, write about it as well.

    e.g. Granny’s digital clock. The clock tower in the church or town hall. Clocks in the school. The clock on the stove, microwave or in the car. Discuss the similarities and differences of the clocks noticed. Have fun clock hunting. How many can you count in one outing? How many are digital? Analog? Big? Small?
  2. Add to the journal as time goes by. It is easy to start the clock hunt in the home.
  3. Always date each clock hunt day, as you know, this is keeping track of time too.

Extend your children’s knowledge of time by comparing ages in your family and friends. How much time did it take to get to that age? What is the difference between your age and mine? How old is the dog? What year was he born? Discuss time in the broader sense. Discuss how a day is measured. A week. A year.  Always keep in mind that you do not want to push your children to where you have lost them or frustrated them.  They are young yet and you have to be aware of their cognitive development as well as their maturity level.  Only discuss what you believe they can comprehend.  You will have to go with your gut instinct.

Link/Reference Us

We spend a lot of time researching and compiling the information on this site. If you find this useful in your research, please use the tool below to properly link to or reference Helping with Math as the source. We appreciate your support!

  • "Telling Time To The Nearest Minute". Helping with Math. Accessed on March 29, 2024. https://helpingwithmath.com/telling-time-to-the-nearest-minute/.

  • "Telling Time To The Nearest Minute". Helping with Math, https://helpingwithmath.com/telling-time-to-the-nearest-minute/. Accessed 29 March, 2024.

  • Telling Time To The Nearest Minute. Helping with Math. Retrieved from https://helpingwithmath.com/telling-time-to-the-nearest-minute/.