Are your students struggling with skip counting? Here are a variety of counting activities and resources to help your students learn how to count within 1,000 in various ways.
Why Teach Skip Counting?
Skip Counting is an important skill for second graders to learn. Skillfully and swiftly being able to skip count forwards and backward is an essential component of developing number sense since it enables students to recognize patterns in numbers. For everyday tasks like telling the time or counting money, kids use counting by 5s and 10s.
Skip counting is crucial because it provides a mathematical foundation for students to build on as they learn other mathematical concepts. “Counting sequences help children understand relationships among numbers and further develop their abilities to apply these understandings to problem-solving situations.” (Shumway, 2011, p. 56)
Sing Counting by 5s Videos
Scratch Garden is another favorite one. My students enjoy watching these videos.
Mr. R has so many counting songs. They are fun to sing and have a catchy tune.
Skip Counting Song
Number Wheels
Number wheels are a great scaffold for students as they learn how to count by 2s, 5s, and 10s. They can use the number wheel to count forwards and backward to help them become fluent in this skill. Check out this post by Rainbow Sky Creations for more information on the number wheel.
Practice Counting Every Day
Children need repeated exposure and skip counting practice to become fluent in this skill. Many students that struggle in math cannot skip count. “Counting routines provide opportunities for students to create the anchors they need for solving problems efficiently and for doing the math mentally.” (Shumway, 2011, p. 56) We practice this skill whenever we have a few extra minutes such as lining up for lunch or recess.
Make Visual Charts
Have your students create anchor charts for counting by counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s. This easy hands-on activity will help students learn number relationships and multiplication times tables. Here are some FREE math charts by Jenny Eather. These math charts are great for math walls, student handouts, or homework help.
Make number charts to help your students. You can learn more about these posters here.
Skip Counting Worksheets
My students use whiteboards for a quick math warm-up or review as I present this skip-counting math warm-up on my big screen in my classroom. As I walk around the classroom, I can quickly see who is having difficulty with this math skill. Following the lesson, I know which students to work with in my small groups. You can grab this FREE math warm-up PowerPoint in my FREE RESOURCE LIBRARY in addition to the FREE alien skip-counting 2nd-grade math worksheet.
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