Learning to count correctly is a process that can take a long time. Enjoy your child’s progress, however slow it may seem and accept their emerging ability to count the way you accepted their ability to walk and to talk. It doesn’t pay to be in a hurry. With lots of practice and encouragement, children will learn to count with confidence and enjoyment.
Research around the country is showing that students need many, many experiences counting. Preschool and young primary students need to count objects of all sorts by ones. Primary students start counting by ones and find ways to organize their counting using more efficient strategies such as counting by 2s, 5s, 10s or 100s.
Counting Activities
Put out a collection of items. You choose the number based on the needs of your child. Use beans, cubes, counters, stones, or crayons –whatever you have a bunch of and vary the items on different days.
Ask your child, “how many “cubes” do you think are in this pile?” Accept all answers (even if you think it is an outrageous guess). Count them and check. (note how they organize their counting.)
Look for:
1. How they use the counting words.
2. Whether they organize the objects in order to keep track. Do they move them as they count? Do they put them in groupings of 5 or 10 or some other number?
3. Whether they recognize that they get a different number than their estimate.
4. Whether they adjust their estimate.
Try re-counting the same group of objects, only this time, count them a different way – by 2s, or 5s, or 10s. Did they get the same answer? Does this surprise them? What would happen if you added 10? Took 10 away?
Look for opportunities to count informally. How many steps do you think it will take to get from here to the (bus, door, corner)? How many windows do you see from the backyard?
For example, your child’s room is a mess! Lots of stuff on the floor! Make the chore of uncluttering the floor a little more fun. Have your child estimate (make a smart guess) how many things are scattered on the floor. Then they count the things as they put them away!
While in the car, invite your child to choose something fun to look for and count. Stop signs, fire hydrants, baby strollers, bikes, red cars, dogs, trucks, cows, etc. might be a few examples.
Provide a notepad and pencil. Help your child think of a simple way to make a mark on a piece of paper (such as an X, a circle or slash or line) every time the item is spotted. Each mark will be equal to one item seen.
So, start counting! Everything! Count things by ones. Count things by twos. Count things by fives. And then, start counting things by tens.
Give a counting game a try. Here’s one of my favorites!
Counting Cheerios
What you need:
2 players
1 die
bowl of Cheerios for each team
paper plate (cheap) for each player
pencil for each player
Player #1 rolls the die and takes that number of Cheerios from the bowl.
Players alternate rolling the die. Play continues until all players have had 10 rolls. They will need to keep tallies on their paper plates.
Children count their Cheerios. The player who has the most Cheerios is the winner. Players may eat their Cheerios!
Variation 1: The winner could be the player with the least
number of Cheerios.
Variation 2: Use two dice and add them together.
Variation 3: Put 50 (or any number you choose) Cheerios on a
plate, roll the die, and subtract Cheerios from the
plate. The first player to reach 0 is the winner.
Now take a look at all the counting games in my grade level math games manuals.
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