Singapore Math Drills Team · 10 November 2026
Free, distraction-free math drills aligned to the MOE syllabus. No sign-up needed to try.
A night-blue bedroom, a crescent moon in the window and a bed with a lavender blanket. On the wall, a round face shows 7:40. "Bedtime is coming! Can you read the hands?"
That is Bedtime Minutes, a 30-second Primary 2 episode of our Topic Explainers series. It is made for your child to watch, with short, simple lines on screen and no voice-over. Watch it together first, then read on.
The video does three things. First, it reads the face at story time (7:40) and again at tooth-brushing time (8:05). Next, a bedtime list shows how long each thing takes: the story takes 1 h 20 min and tooth brushing takes 3 min. Last, it uses one fact, 1 h = 60 min, to turn hours and minutes into minutes, and then minutes back into hours and minutes.
All of this is Primary 2 Time in the Singapore syllabus: telling time to the minute, measuring time in hours and minutes, and converting between hours and minutes and minutes only.
An analogue clock face has two hands, and each one tells us a different thing.
1. The short hand is the hour hand. Read it first. If it is between two numbers, the hour is the number it has just passed, not the one it is heading towards. At 7:40, the hour hand sits between 7 and 8, so the hour is 7.
2. The long hand is the minute hand. Each number on the face is 5 minutes more than the one before. So when the minute hand points at a number, count in fives from the 12: 5, 10, 15 and so on. At 7:40 the minute hand points at 8, and eight fives make 40. That is 40 minutes.
3. Small marks are single minutes. Between two numbers there are small marks, one for each minute. If the minute hand stops between numbers, count in fives to the last number it passed, then count on in ones.
4. Write the hour, a colon, then two digits for the minutes. 7 and 40 minutes is written 7:40. When the minutes are less than 10, a zero keeps the place: 8 and 5 minutes is 8:05.
How long something takes is a length of time, not a time on the face. We measure it in hours (h) and minutes (min). One fact links the two units:
1 h = 60 min
The video draws this as blocks: each hour is a long 60-minute block, and the extra minutes are a short part block beside it. Joining the blocks gives the total in minutes. Splitting a long bar into 60-minute blocks gives the hours.
All the numbers below are the ones in the video, except the try-at-home questions at the end.
The hour hand is between 7 and 8. The minute hand points at 8. What time is it?
Step 1: Read the hour hand. It has passed 7 but not reached 8, so the hour is 7.
Step 2: Read the minute hand. It points at 8. Count in fives: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40. That is 40 minutes.
Step 3: Write the time. Story time is at 7:40.
The hour hand is just past 8. The minute hand points at 1. What time is it?
Step 1: Read the hour hand. Just past 8, so the hour is 8.
Step 2: Read the minute hand. It points at 1, which is one five: 5 minutes.
Step 3: Write the time with a zero. Tooth brushing is at 8:05. Not 8:5, and not 8:50.
Notice the hour hand. At 8:05 it has only just left the 8, because only a few minutes of the hour have gone by. At 7:40 it was much closer to the 8, because 40 minutes of the hour had gone by. The hour hand creeps along all hour long.
The story takes 1 h 20 min. How many minutes is that?
Step 1: Change the hours. 1 h = 60 min.
Step 2: Add the extra minutes. 60 + 20 = 80.
Answer: 1 h 20 min = 80 min.
The video does a second one the same way: 1 h 50 min is 60 + 50 = 110, so 1 h 50 min = 110 min.
How many hours and minutes is 130 min?
Step 1: Take out a group of 60. 130 − 60 = 70. That is 1 hour, with 70 minutes still to sort out.
Step 2: Is there another 60? Yes. 70 − 60 = 10. That is a second hour, with 10 minutes left.
Step 3: Count the hours and the minutes left. 2 groups of 60 came out, and 10 minutes are left.
Answer: 130 min = 2 h 10 min.
The video's other one is shorter: 95 − 60 = 35, and 35 is less than 60, so 95 min = 1 h 35 min.
Check: go back the other way. 2 h = 120 min, and 120 + 10 = 130. It matches.
- The minute hand is 2 small marks past the 4. How many minutes past the hour is it?
Count in fives to the 4: 5, 10, 15, 20. Then count on in ones for the small marks: 21, 22. It is 22 minutes past the hour.
- A family outing takes 2 h 30 min. How many minutes is that?
2 h = 60 + 60 = 120 min, and 120 + 30 = 150. So 2 h 30 min = 150 min.
- How many hours and minutes is 100 min?
100 − 60 = 40, and 40 is less than 60. So 100 min = 1 h 40 min.
1 h 20 min = 120 min or 130 min = 1 h 30 min. An hour is 60 minutes, so check the unit fact before every conversion.Keep each little game to a few minutes. Real faces and hands come first, then pictures, then written numbers: the concrete, pictorial, abstract order of Singapore math teaching. For more Primary 2 question types, Primary 2 sample questions explained walks through several of them step by step.
Telling time is a skill your child uses every day, and it settles in through short, regular practice rather than long sessions.
That is how we built Singapore Math Drills. Daily Five drills put five hand-picked drill cards in front of your child each day, so they never have to decide what to practise. Practice is calm by design: no guilt-tripping over a missed day and no dark patterns, and your child's progress is only ever measured against their own. Read the hands. Count the minutes!
Try a free interactive Primary 2 worksheet and see how calm practice feels, with no signup or credit card required.