How Long Does It Take? Seconds, Minutes, or Hours?

Are you a teacher struggling to explain the concept of time to your students? Do they have difficulty understanding how long a second, a minute or an hour is? If this sounds familiar, you have come to the right place!

Teach Starter has put together an amazing collection of resources to help make teaching duration and time estimation easier. With these fun and interactive activities, your students can learn about time and how to compare different units.

Units of Time Worksheet for Early Years!

Use this worksheet to reinforce your student’s understanding of how long specific events take – seconds, minutes, or hours.

Students cut out the events and paste them into the table provided, depending on how long each one takes.

Note that there is no one “correct” answer as to how these events should be sorted. It is more important that students justify their thinking when sharing their groupings; e.g. one child might say that it takes seconds to eat a snack, while another child might say that it takes minutes.

This resource was created by Lindsey Phillips, a Teach Starter Collaborator.

More Ways to Teach How to Tell the Time!

Don’t stop there! We’ve got more activities to shorten your lesson planning time and help your students learn to tell the time!:  

teaching resource

Time to the Minute and Elapsed Time – Teaching PowerPoint

Teach telling the time to the nearest minute and calculate elapsed time with this 18-slide PowerPoint for teachers.

teaching resource

Classroom Clock Labels - Flower Display

Use our Flower Wall Clock Labels to create a garden-themed clock display to help children read the time.

teaching resource

I Have, Who Has? – Time to the Minute

Practise telling time to the nearest minute with this set of 'I Have, Who Has' game cards.