To tell time to the nearest 5 minutes, skip count by 5s starting from 12 as the minute hand moves around the clock (5, 10, 15, 20, ..., 55). Each number on the clock represents 5 minutes of time passing. For example, if the minute hand is on the 3, it's 15 minutes past the hour.
Label a demonstration clock with '5, 10, 15, ..., 55' around the edges. Skip count by 5s while pointing to each number. Practice identifying where the minute hand is pointing and determining the minutes.
You already know how to skip count by 5s: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55. And you can already read the hour and half-hour on a clock. Telling time to five-minute intervals connects both skills — the skip-counting pattern is literally mapped onto the clock face.
Here's the key insight: each of the 12 numbers on a clock represents a 5-minute mark. The number 1 means 5 minutes, the number 2 means 10 minutes, the number 3 means 15 minutes, and so on. So instead of reading "the minute hand is on 3," you read it as "15 minutes." You're using skip counting by 5s to translate a number on the clock into minutes past the hour.
The minute hand (the long hand) tells you the minutes; the hour hand (the short hand) tells you the hour. Watch the hour hand carefully: when it's pointing straight at a number, it's exactly that hour. But as time passes, the hour hand slowly moves away from that number toward the next one. By 6:30, the hour hand is halfway between 6 and 7. A common confusion is reading the hour hand as the wrong number because it has drifted. Rule of thumb: the hour hand tells you the most recent whole hour it passed, not where it's heading.
To read any clock: (1) identify the hour from the short hand, (2) skip count by 5s around the clock to where the long hand points, (3) combine them. If the short hand is past the 4 and the long hand points to the 9, skip count to 45 — it's 4:45. With practice, you'll stop needing to count every mark and will start recognizing times like quarter-past (15 minutes), half-past (30 minutes), and quarter-to (45 minutes) instantly.