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Telling Time With Dash

March 20, 2025

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Looking for a hands-on way to bring time-telling to life for your elementary school students? In this engaging lesson, your students will join forces with Dash to draw analog clocks on a whiteboard mat, depicting different times. Learners will practice telling time in hours, half-hours, and even minutes. Not only will they sharpen their time-telling skills and deepen their understanding of analog clocks, they’ll also get to use coding and robotics skills to engage with this hands-on activity!

CCSS Standards Addressed

1.MD.3

Tell and write time in hours and half-hours using analog and digital clocks.

2.MD.7

Tell and write time to the nearest five minutes, using a.m. and p.m.

3.MD.1

Tell and write time to the nearest minute.

Here are the step-by-step instructions

Choose and print these worksheets we put together for students to complete. There is a worksheet for half hour, 5 minute, and 1 minute times.

Attach the Sketch Kit to Dash, or have students create their own.

For an extra challenge, code Dash to draw a circle. HERE is a blog post we put together with tips and solutions on how to do this.

On the Sketch Mat or large piece of paper, draw a large circle. Then, have students write the numbers of the analog clock inside the circle.

Students will choose 3 times from their worksheet to program Dash to draw the hands on the clock to represent the time. Have Dash say the time it’s representing

Extra Challenges:

AM & PM Time Drawing Challenge

Provide students with different AM and PM time scenarios (e.g., “Wake up at 7:00 AM,” “Eat dinner at 6:30 PM”).
Students will choose a time, then program Dash to draw the time

Elapsed Time Drawing Challenge

Give students elapsed time word problems (e.g., “You start reading at 3:15 PM and read for 45 minutes. What time do you finish?”).
Students code Dash to draw the hands to represent both the start time and the end time.

Time Zone Exploration

Have students research different time zones and create a world clock.
Give them a scenario: “If it’s 3 PM in New York, what time is it in London?”
Using a map, students track time zone changes.
Extra Challenge: Code Dash to draw different clock faces that represent various locations