At some point and time, we always go from just writing what the clock says to how much time passed from a start point or an endpoint.
This can be a real struggle for some kids. I know that my girls have been hit or miss about the idea. I always like to have something on hand for when they do struggle.
These free telling time mats can help with that!
Time is always fun to learn with. We love the book A Second, a Minute, a Week With Days in It: A Book About Time that talks about time.
There are two types of time tell mats. They come in color and black & white options. Because I know some people like to save on ink.
I put this two mats back to back in a sheet protector and store them in a math help binder we have. I also printed them on cardstock to help them last longer.
The first mat has a clock on the page that you can use for drawing on clock hands. It also has a start and stop time to write in and a filled out number line. The number line has 0 to 60 on it.

The second mat is similar to the first. It has a clock and number line as well. But this number line does not have the numbers filled out. This allows the kids to fill it out or use different start and end times for the line.

How we used these mats
These mats work great with time task cards. I pulled some from the Zoo Time Task Cards to help show how to use the mats.
You can see the card we used from the zoo set. It is how long and gives a starting point on the card. This is simple to use the mat. You find the start point on the number line and the count forward that many times. I have them write the 5 between the jumps to give them something to add up to the number they are looking for. You can see the jumps on the number line. And we wrote in the start and stop time on the mat. We also used the click to write in the lines between numbers and drew on the final with the click hands.

You could have also just used the clock as the number line. We write in the line between and then write the hands on the clock for the time you are looking for.

The second mat is great for when you have start and stop times that might change time, like from 3 o’clock to 2 o’clock. Or you just want them to practice using a number line.
For our example, we started the number line at the end near the number we ended at 5:37. So the end number line started at 5:40 and start was 4:40. Then they used the line to jump back the right amount of time. It is simple and easy to use.

What you will find in these printables
- 2 Telling Time Mats
- Colored: Red, green or black and white
- Time Number lines – filled out and to fill in
- Clock on page to help
Check out these time cards to use with these mats:
Cassie – 3Dinosaurs.com
Hi Cassie, just noticed there are a missing “40” on the green clock page;)
Thanks! I got it fixed.