How Long Until?: The Rainbow Castle Tea Party
Princess Ruby is having a tea party in the garden of Rainbow Castle, and everyone is waiting for cake, puppets and fireworks! Here we work out how many minutes until something happens, or how long something took.
Remember: To find how long, count on from the start time to the end time. If you pass a new hour, stop at the o’clock on the way: from 3:50 to 4:00 is 10 minutes, and from 4:00 to 4:10 is 10 more, so 20 minutes. An hour has 60 minutes, not 100!
Magic trick: Make a jump to the next o’clock first, then jump the rest: 2:40 → 3:00 is 20 minutes.
Seek and Find
Look carefully at the picture of the Rainbow Castle Tea Party and find:
- 🫖 Find the 6 teacups. If each cup of tea takes 5 minutes to drink, the 6 cups take 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 minutes: half an hour.
- 🎂 Find the 3 cakes. If each cake takes 20 minutes to decorate, 3 cakes take 20 + 20 + 20 = 60 minutes: exactly 1 hour.
- 😴 Find the kitten napping on a cushion. If it fell asleep at 11:10 and wakes up at 11:35, that’s a 25-minute nap!
- 🐱 Millie and her kitten Biscuit are hiding in every picture. Can you spot them?