Interactive Teaching Clock

The full guide - controls, difficulty levels and tips - is on this page, just below the game. Read about Set the Clock

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Explore how a clock moves

Choose any time. Move forwards or backwards, cross the hour, and compare the hands with the readout. There is no question to get right.

00510152025303540455055123456789101112

Short hand: hours. Long hand: minutes.

3:15 amquarter past three at night
Clock display
Set a specific time

Use 00–23 for the hour and 00–59 for minutes.

Try a useful example

For noon or midnight, choose its “five before” example, keep a five-minute jump and press Later.

Move either hand, or use Earlier and Later. The hands stay linked.

How linked hands and explorer stickers work

Moving the minute hand past twelve also moves the hour forwards or backwards. The hour hand keeps its gradual minute offset. Drags follow the shortest movement between sampled positions; a half-turn ties clockwise. For an exact duration, use the jump controls.

One completed drag or one time-changing control action counts as an explorer adjustment. Display switches, typing before submission, unchanged times and simply opening the tool do not count. Explorer stickers mark 1, 10 and 50 adjustments on this browser; they do not score correct answers. Use Set a target for the existing accuracy-based clock practice.

Open your sticker book to view earned explorer rewards.

This mode starts at 3:15 when opened. Its unfinished clock position and display choices are not saved; a favourite remembers the Explore mode.

Interactive teaching clock: explore time

Open Explore time for an open-ended teaching clock. Choose any time, show Arabic or Roman hour numbers, compare 12-hour am/pm and 24-hour readouts, or hide the digital and word readouts for discussion.

In Explore mode, the hands stay linked. Moving the minute hand through twelve carries the hour forwards or backwards, including noon and midnight. Earlier and Later move exactly 1, 5, 15 or 30 minutes, or one hour. Direct entry uses hours 00–23 and minutes 00–59; the display can still use 12-hour time.

Try Five before noon or Five before midnight, leave a five-minute jump selected and press Later. Watch both hands and the readout change. The Roman numeral option shows I–XII on the same functional clock face. Dragging is optional: all time-setting and display controls work with touch, mouse or Tab followed by Enter or Space.

One completed drag or one time-changing control action counts towards the separate Clock Explorer stickers at 1, 10 and 50 adjustments. Display switches, unchanged times and simply opening the tool do not count. These rewards mark exploration, not correct answers. Your favourite can remember Explore mode; the clock position and display choices start fresh at 3:15 when it is reopened.

Set a target keeps the existing 12-hour matching exercise and its original correct-answer stickers. Its two hands can be set independently; linked-hand and 24-hour exploration belongs to Explore mode. The rest of this guide describes target practice.

Prefer to choose an answer? Play Read the Clock, including its 24-hour option. Both games are free and untimed.

How to play Set the Clock

This is the mirror image of a time-reading quiz. Instead of being shown a clock and asked for the time, you are given the time and asked for the clock. A target appears above the face in two forms at once - the British wording ("quarter past three") in large type, with the digital reading (3:15) on a chip below it - and the job is to move the two hands until the face agrees.

The hands always start at twelve o'clock, or at nine o'clock on the rounds where twelve is the answer, so there is always something to do. The moment the hour and minute hands both land on the target the whole face washes green, the tally of times set goes up, and the next target arrives about a second later. Overshooting costs nothing: the hands simply keep going round until they are right. There is no timer, no attempt limit and no wrong-answer screen anywhere in this game.

Controls

  • Dragging: press on the face and swing. Whichever hand your finger or pointer is nearest is the one that moves, so the short hour hand is as easy to grab as the long minute hand. The minute hand snaps to the nearest valid position for the difficulty you are on, and the hour hand snaps to whole hours.
  • Nudge buttons: four large buttons under the clock - Hour back and forward, Minutes back and forward. The minute buttons move by whatever the current step is, so on the easiest level one press jumps a full half hour.
  • Keyboard: those four buttons are ordinary labelled buttons, so Tab and Enter drive the entire game. Dragging is never required.
  • Menu: a button above the clock returns to the settings screen whenever you want to change the level.

A reminder line sits permanently under the face - short hand = hour, long hand = minutes - because that is the distinction between the two hands stays visible while you play.

Difficulty and how the hands snap

Open Change difficulty & options. The "How tricky?" setting controls which times are asked for and how finely the hands can be placed. The target range and snapping step match: at the easiest level a child physically cannot land the minute hand on anything but o'clock or half past, so fiddly near-misses are impossible.

  • O'clock and half - the minute hand snaps in half-hour jumps. Two possible minute positions in the whole game.
  • Quarter past - quarter-hour snapping, and every target is quarter past the hour, so the practice is entirely on placing the hour hand correctly for a time that is not on the hour.
  • Quarters and 5s - five-minute snapping across the whole face.
  • Every minute - free placement to the exact minute.

A second switch prints faint minute numbers around the rim as a counting aid. The working level chosen for the session sets the opening defaults - half hours with the rim numbers showing for KS1, five-minute steps for Lower KS2, exact minutes with a bare face for Upper KS2 - and an adult can change either at any point. Every target remains a 12-hour time. Explore time and Read the Clock also offer 24-hour readouts.

Stickers

Times set correctly add up across every visit, not just the current one, and feed the shared sticker book. The thresholds are 1, 10, 30 and 100, unlocking First Set, Hand Mover, Time Setter and Clockwork Pro.

Tips for getting the hands right

  • Place the hour hand first, then the minutes. Doing it the other way round means re-checking the hour after every minute change, because the short hand drifts as the minutes move.
  • Teach the drift explicitly. At quarter to five the short hand is nearly touching the 5 but the hour is still four. Check where the hand sits between the two numbers.
  • Use the nudge buttons for counting practice. Four presses of "Minutes +" on the five-minute level is a live count in fives: five, ten, fifteen, twenty.
  • Say the target out loud before touching anything. The words and the digital chip are both there so a child can convert between them before they touch the hands.
  • If a child can set the time but not read it back, switch over to Read the Clock for a few rounds - the two skills come apart more often than people expect.

Who Set the Clock is for

Choose this task to practise placing the hands rather than selecting an answer card. There is no required order between the two games. Watch how the hour hand moves between numbers as minutes change; the buttons let you explore one step at a time.

Because the four nudge buttons make dragging optional, it stays usable for children with limited fine motor control, and for anyone working on a laptop trackpad or a whiteboard where precise dragging is awkward. It runs in any modern browser, so a tutor can share their screen and let the child call out which way to move each hand.

Questions parents and tutors ask

Is dragging the hands the only way to play?

No. Four buttons move the hour and minute hands in either direction. Use touch, a mouse, or Tab followed by Enter or Space; dragging is optional.

How is this different from Read the Clock?

Read the Clock shows a face and asks you to choose its time. Set the Clock gives a target time and asks you to move the hands. Choose either task; there is no required order.

What happens if the hands overshoot?

Nothing at all. There is no penalty and no attempt counter - the hands keep going round until they land on the target and the face turns green.

Does the hour hand move realistically?

Yes. The short hand drifts gradually as the minutes pass, so at twenty-five to five it sits between the 4 and the 5 exactly as a real clock would. That drift is one of the main things a child has to learn to read.

Is Set the Clock free to play?

Yes. It is free, with no signup or installation. Optional usage analytics runs only with consent. Earned stickers are saved in this browser; see the privacy policy.