Working on counting 10s and 1s

Mathematicians explore counting by 10s and 1s in a variety of ways in the classroom throughout the week.  Today,as a group we talked about how to be organized in our counting.  Why is that important?  What does it mean to be efficient?  Students decided that if we have objects that are in in towers of 10 that we could line them up in columns of 10 and count them as 10s also and set the extras in a space near the groups (Picture 1). Another student decided to make their representation like the 10s frame that we use daily in math and count them as 10  and then count the extras (Picture 2).  

What can you do at home?  Give your child objects to count, have them practice counting by 1, 2, 5, 10.  Talk to them about why they are choosing to count by a certain number (if there is a large amount of things, making groups of 10 would be the most efficient and then counting the remaining ones).  Asking questions like, how do you know there are 10 in that group?  What could you do so anyone who walked in would be able to count those objects quickly and accurately?  Have fun with math, count cars, silverware as you set the table, count socks by 2 as you fold laundry, count shoes as you clean the entry way.  Make math part of your day.  Encourage your child to count and explore math in their world by modeling this yourself!  They will LOVE it, I promoise!

Check out Bedtime Math for some daily fun!