Teaching kids how to tell time can be surprisingly tricky. These time-telling apps will help your children get familiar with both analog and digital clocks, reading the time to 5-minute increments and even identifying AM and PM.
To help you learn how to tell the time, these telling-time apps help you introduce the concept of time into everyday activities to make time-telling easier. While not the easiest lesson to impart, it can be endlessly rewarding, as time-telling skills can significantly increase a child's cognitive abilities.
Here are a few tips on how to teach time to children:
- Start by making it easy and fun
- Understanding analogue clocks before digital
- Learn the numbers from one to sixty
- Grasping concepts of time
- Avoid figurative expressions at first
Reinforce concepts of time during your everyday routines, and they will be confident in no time! Your kids will perfect their clock skills with ease with our round-up of the best apps for teaching children the time on iPhone, iPad and Android. You can use these apps to help your children tell time or read the clock, including digital and analog clocks, AM and PM, and elapsed time.
Learning About Time and Clocks - Tips and Difficulties
Here is the list of the best apps for teaching kids how to tell time.
Kids Clock Learning teaches kids to tell the time and is also a helpful tool for adults helping kids learn this skill. It is suitable for any kids who are learning about digital and analogue times. This free telling time app teaches the basic elements of telling the time in 12- and 24-hour formats.
Parents wanting to assist their kids in learning to tell the time will find this an excellent app to own. It is cheap to buy, well-designed and contains enhancements not featured in comparable apps. It’s one of the most comprehensive telling time apps out there.
Devices: iPhone, iPad and Android
If we missed any of the Best Apps for Telling Time Practice for Kids, tell us about them!
OLOfusion helps kids learn about telling the time and reading it from digital and analogue clocks. The app contains varied exercises, games and puzzles that each provide guidance and practise in a different skill that makes up the broader topic of time.
OLOFusion's different game styles and various aspects of telling the time will help to keep kids engaged.
Devices: iPhone, iPad
Time Duration is an easy to use game, which gives your child a fun way to practice telling time. Time Duration is a great telling time app for helping children practice the topic of elapsed time. This free telling time app teaches the basic elements of telling the time in 12- and 24-hour formats.
It rewards the children when they make progress and encourages them to feel good about their maths skills making it one of the best free apps for kids. The gameplay is intuitive, visually appealing and has great educational value.
Devices: iPhone and iPad
SmartAlec Clock is a teaching aid and practice tool for helping kids learn to tell the time using an analogue clock. It has a clear and innovatively designed clock face to assist the process, and its speech makes it suitable for kids with limited literacy skills.
In both the English National Curriculum and the US Common Core State Standards, kids should be comfortable using an analogue clock around the ages of 7 or 8. The app is suitable for any child who is yet to master telling the time on an analogue clock.
Devices: Android, iPhone and iPad
Timeland is a popular clock learning app that teaches children how to tell time. The features include a child friendly calendar and clock to teach the concept of everyday activities as well as displaying how time moves on. This telling time app is designed for children aged 3 to 7 and comes in a number of different languages.
Timeland is a good telling time app that can be used by young children with their parents or unsupported once the timelines have been set up. The ability to access the calendar to a specific date is ideal to map out events for the child on a particular day such as their birthday or a week leading up to an event such as a holiday.
Timeland is a calendar and a clock translated to the imagination of kids. Enter the parent mode, simply place the icons on the Timeland timeline of a specific day or create recurring events and your child has a perfect view on all the activities of that day and days to come.
Devices: iPhone, iPad and Android
Messing around with: Elapsed time is a unique telling time app that is aimed at primary school aged children and provides an exploratory environment that teaches them how to work out elapsed time. It contains two learning environments: Daily Activities and Elapsed Time. In both environments the app synchronises a changing background and daily events with a clock and a timeline to give a child the impression of time moving through the day. This telling time app is free from in-app purchases and in-app adverts.
Devices: iPhone and iPad
Interactive Telling Time provides your child with a variety of different games and activities to practice the important skill of telling time. This telling time app covers telling the time so thoroughly that you are unlikely to need another teaching clock app to support your child with this. Interactive Telling app helps children explore telling the time in both analogue and digital formats. This telling time app offers several well-designed exercises that will help young children or special needs students practice vital skills related to time.
Devices: iPhone and iPad

8. Kids Tell Time
(iPhone, iPad)
Kids Tell Time is a telling the time app that teaches time concepts to children. When you open this teaching clock app, you see a digital clock, an analog clock and a calendar page with the current time, day and date. With this app, children will learn to tell time to the hour and minute, calendar concepts, digital time, and the components of a daily schedule.
Kids Tell Time is a comprehensive telling the time app that helps children practice telling time to the hour, half hour, five minute intervals, and minutes. This interactive time telling app covers all the bases for instruction in time and calendar skills.
Devices: iPhone and iPad

9. Tic Toc Time
(iPhone, iPad)
Tic Toc Time is a solid resource for helping students understand the concepts behind why we tell time the way we do. Kids can learn about the sun's position in the sky (using shadows to estimate the time), how clocks are designed, and how to tell time on analog clocks. The first set of games -- involving the sun and shadows is stronger and does a nice job supporting the concept of how we tell time.
Devices: iPhone and iPad

10. Jungle Time : learn how to tell time
(iPhone, iPad)
Jungle Time time telling app teaches children how to tell time with jungle creatures and sounds that kids are sure to enjoy. It covers a wide range of time related skills, allows for students to take on tasks of increasing difficulty, and offers parents and teachers the ability to track progress. Jungle Time is a visually powerful telling the time app with jungle creatures and sounds that kids are sure to enjoy. It covers a wide range of time related skills, allows for students to take on tasks of increasing difficulty, and offers parents and teachers the ability to track progress.
Devices: iPhone and iPad
Learning time: What is the time?
Telling the time is an important skill to be taught to children to ready them not only for life but for their further learning in Maths. Telling the time is a mathematical skill that is introduced very early on in the Curriculum framework.
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