For Parents and Students
First Grade
Once students have mastered the 5 rational counting skills (stable ordering, one-to-one correspondence, cardinality, order irrelevance and abstraction) they are ready to move on to counting on, counting back and skip counting. Developing strategies to master counting lays the foundation for addition, subtraction and multiplication later. First grade students are expected to learn to count by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s to 100 and backwards by 1’s from 30 according to Virginia’s current Standards of Learning.
Books
The M&M’s Count to One Hundred Book by Barbara Barbieri McGrath
* Counts to one hundred by ones, twos, fives and tens.
* Uses colorful images, rhymes and something the children can relate to, candy.
Turtle Splash! Countdown at the Pond by Cathryn Falwell
* Counts down from 10 by ones.
* Uses colorful images and great adjectives. This book also gives information about turtles that some children (and adults) may not know. This helps hold their attention. The details about different animals around the pond keep the children interested, as well as the curiosity of what is going to come along next to make a turtle disappear into the water.
From One to One Hundred by Teri Sloat
* Begins by counting by ones (from 1 to 10) and then counts by tens to 100.
* Each page is filled with many pictures in sets. Children can count the pictures and/or the sets on many pages.
* This book is filled with energy packed pictures. The photos are not boring pictures of one object all over the page to count. There are picture of action packed events to count. This is a great way to hold students attention and have them look for the variety of things to count.
* Each page also displays the numeral and its corresponding written numeral.
Emily’s First 100 Days of School by Rosemary Wells
* Lengthy book (probably too long for one sitting for most 1st graders)
* However, it has great activity ideas which would mark a great stopping point.
* Cute, realistic imagery of the first 100 days of school. Seems to cover many things that actually occur during that time frame. Gives students exciting pictures and ideas that relate to numbers and school. Things that as a young student may make them want to come to school to see that 100th day.
Reese’s Pieces Count By Fives by Jerry Pallotta
* Counting by 5’s to 100. Another book that goes straight for what we know kids love…food… candy! This is a very creative way to focus students on counting.
* Shows children they can learn/count their food and just eat it.
One Watermelon Seed by Celia Barker Lottridge
* Brightly colored book about planting seeds in a garden. Great to be tied to a science lesson. Counts from 1 to ten by one’s mentioning “and they grew” to demonstrate the number gets larger and the amount of items in the garden gets larger.
* As the garden grows faster, items are counted by 10’s. This shows students that it is faster to count by larger sets of numbers. If we continued counting the fast growing garden by one’s, we would not be able to keep up with the fast growing.
Websites for Kids
Counting Game with options- (once here, click on counting game)
* This takes a few minutes of prep work on the part of the teacher. However, once you set up the dynamics of the game the way you wish, you can reset the link to the exact game you have chosen. As the teacher, you get to choose the options with this game. You choose the name of the game, objects to appear in the window for the student to count, how many objects they should count (lowest to highest numbers) and the number of problems each game should have. This allows you to have control over the average length of time each student should take to play. This game will also provide you with the “average” or score at the top (above the game screen) at the end of each game. This could be used to assess how a student is doing on counting sets of objects for this particular game.
* Example of Game- Here I have set an example for Open Wide.
* I only set it to 10 counting problems so give it a try. Just a warning, it does have sound.
* Connecting the dots to make a picture is great but, this game adds the dimension of having to count backwards from 20 to connect the dots. It also has the voice of children who will count aloud as you touch the correct dot. It will not allow you to make an error or make any noise when you touch a dot out of order.
Counting by 1’s, 2’s or 5’s, etc-
* This site allows you to choose what type of counting activity you would like to do, how to count (by 1’s, 2’s, 5’s, etc.) and how high you should count. You should be able to count a variety of items such as robots, girls, stars and fish. This site seems to be adding new material so check back for new games in other areas as well.
* This game gives students two of three numbers and they have to fill in the missing number. The first round makes it seem rather simple with the missing number being the third one. However, the difficulty level picks up as the levels move on. This is a great game to challenge students who are excelling at the current level.
* The counting games from learning planet allow you to choose which number to count by. The instructions may be a bit difficult for a first grader, so it is something that the teacher should give instructions on first. I would recommend that each student practice this game counting by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s. The barrel counting game will give them the practice counting by 1’s.
Coloring Numbers online to show number patterns on the 100’s chart will also show color patterns.
* These are also printable for students after they complete their work. You can assign certain colors for counting by 2’s, 5’s, or 10’s. Students can correct mistakes if they are made. It is important to let students know this in advance. Demonstrating this game is a good idea prior to sending students to practice skip counting on it.