Once your kids can consistently count at least 10 objects and know their numbers up to 100, you can use the methods below to count more than 11 things. Unfortunately I didn't take any videos of Little Mr. doing these Counting to 1000 activities, so I took pictures to help illustrate what we did instead. When Copycat gets to this, I plan to update this post with videos of him doing these Counting to 1000 activities.
For these learning activities, we used these math blocks, which were easy for kids as young as 2-3 years old to take apart and put together. We were able to use these blocks for his math activities as well as his counting activities.
Mini Lesson 1: The number 0
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONE REACHED: None
DURATION: 1-2 minutes
MATERIALS USED:
Blocks/toys
Explaining the number 0.
Before I could move on, I needed to explain what the number 0 meant. Up until this point, they knew that some numbers (10, 20, etc), had 0's in them, but they didn't know what 0 things were. What my kids understood best was when I told them zero meant that there is nothing there, or there are no blocks. Using either blocks or toys, I would ask them several times to give me a number of toys/blocks between 0-9 , frequently asking for 0 of them.
Understanding what 0 means was necessary so that when it came to the activities below and they have zero "ones" (for the numbers 10, 20, 30, etc) or zero tens (101,102, 103, etc), they were able to write in "0" or put no blocks in the corresponding column.
Mini Lesson 2: Counting more than 10 objects
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES REACHED: Understand what 0 means, can count to at least 10
DURATION: 5-10 minutes
MATERIALS USED:
Whiteboard or paper
Whiteboard marker or pencil/pen
Math blocks or 100 objects to count
Introducing what the tens number is in a two digit number.
First I would explain that when a number is made up of 2 numbers (digits), the right most number (he already knew right from left from figuring out paths for his coding toys) is the "ones" number, or the number of ones there are in that number. The number next to it is the "tens" number, or the number of tens in that number.
Part 1: Counting the number of tens and number of ones
I would set up my blocks and white board like this (my son could read at this point so he knew the left column was the tens column and the right column was the ones column. He also knew what the equals sign meant already from his previous Math activities - Inchimals and Introducing Equations, which I'll be adding soon).
Then I asked him to count the number of ones in the "ONES" column, and write that number as the ones number on the right most blank. Then I would ask him to count the number of tens in the "TENS" column and write that number as the tens number in the left blank. I would then have him tell me the number that he just made.
I used this activity to help him practice his writing as well as he already knew how to write numbers. If your child doesn't know how to write yet, you can write in the numbers for them as they tell you each one. When they complete this first part of the activity, it should look like this, with your child telling you that there are thirteen blocks:
Part 2: Using the ones number and tens number
Then I would choose a number between 1-99 and set up the board like this:
I'd ask him, "How many ones are there?", or, "What's the ones number?" Then he'd put that many ones in the "ONES" column. Then I'd ask, "How many tens are there?", or, "What's the tens number?", and he'd count that many tens and put them in the tens column so that it looked like the example below:
Part 3: Quicker counting - in tens and ones
I would ask him, can you double check that there are 45 (or whatever number you chose for 2b) blocks/boxes? This gets him to count to that number by pointing to each 10 and counting in 10's, then pointing to each single block and counting in 1's. So in this case, he would point to each 10 and say ten, twenty, thirty, forty. Then he would point to each single block in the ones column and say forty-one, forty-two, forty-three, forty-four, forty-five!
To show him the advantage of counting objects like this, I would say, "Isn't that so much faster than counting each block one by one?" And I would proceed to quickly try counting one by one up to the number (in this example, 45) while running out of breath to show him that doing it one by one takes longer.
REPETITIONS: After a few sessions, the Little Mr. was able to complete all 3 parts of the activity in about 5 minutes: first he filled in the blanks by counting blocks I set out for him, then he himself gave me the number of blocks that I asked for, and then he counts them. In the beginning though, it probably took about 5 minutes just to explain how the activity worked. If you prefer, you can choose to do the parts of the activity separately or sequentially as your child's 5-minute activity (or you could also alternate doing the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd parts of the activity every 5-minute session).
Mini Lesson 3: Counting 100+ things
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES REACHED: Understand what 0 means, can count up to 100 objects, can count in hundreds
DURATION: 5-10 minutes
MATERIALS USED:
Whiteboard or paper
Whiteboard marker or pencil/pen
Math blocks or 100 objects to count
Groups of 100 (I drew 100 small boxes on cardstock paper and cut them out in groups of 100)
Introducing the hundreds number is in a 3 digit number.
Once your child is confident counting objects using the tens and ones digits, I did the exact same activity except I added a "HUNDREDS" column. The first time I did this activity, I explained that for these numbers, you say the hundreds number before the rest of the number (so 152 would be one hundred fifty two, and 685 would be six hundred eighty five). Then I did the exact same activity as 4) above, except with a hundreds column:
Part 1: Counting the number of hundreds, tens and ones
First I would choose a number between 1-999, put that number of blocks/boxes on the board, and ask him to count the number of ones and write that in the ones column. Count the number of tens and write that in the tens column. Then count the number of hundreds and put that in the hundreds column.
Part 2: Using the ones, tens, and hundreds numbers
Next, I would choose a number between 1-999 and write it down, and he had to put the right number of boxes/blocks in the correct columns to give me that number of blocks (so in the example above, the correct answer would be 3 cards of 100 boxes, 4 columns of 10 blocks, and 7 single blocks).
Part 3: Quicker counting - in hundreds, tens and ones
Ask your child to double check that there are 347 blocks (or whatever number you chose for Part 2) by counting in hundreds, then tens, then ones. So for 347, he would point at the hundreds and count one hundred, two hundred, three hundred. Then he'd point at the tens and say, three hundred ten, three hundred twenty, three hundred thirty, three hundred forty. Then he'd point at the ones and say three hundred forty one, three hundred forty two, three hundred forty three, three hundred forty four, three hundred forty five, three hundred forty six, three hundred forty seven!
Tips for transitioning to the next hundreds number:
Counting to the next hundreds number (eg. 98, 99, 100, 101, 102 .... , or 697, 698, 699, 700, 701, 702 .... etc). was confusing for Little Mr., so we had to work on that a little. When he would get stuck counting along number lines during his Math activity (eg. what comes after 399?), I would remind him to count in hundreds to figure out what came after the current hundreds number. With the 399 example, he would count 100, 200, 300, 400! So he would know to continue on 400, 401, 402, etc.
Mini Lesson 4: 1000+
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES REACHED: Understand what 0 means, can count up to 100 objects, can count in hundreds
DURATION: 5-10 minutes
MATERIALS USED:
Whiteboard or paper
Whiteboard marker or pencil/pen
Math blocks or 100 objects to count
Representations for the thousands (and ten thousands, etc if you want to go above that)
You can repeat this activity for the thousands number, ten thousands number, hundreds of thousands number, millions number, and so on.
Because my son was curious and asked, "What comes after nine hundred and ninety nine?", I told him that 1000 comes afterwards, and that the next column to the left is the thousands column. His math activity as of this moment doesn't go above 1000, so I haven't focused on that right now, and replaced his counting activity with more math related activities to help him with whatever he was struggling with his math activity. But it should be easy enough to modify the activities above and just add the thousands / tens of thousands / hundreds of thousands / millions, etc columns as they master each place!
This is just the progression to teach counting up to 1000 that I used with my kids. Hopefully it can help your kids too! Feel free to do the same or make your own improvements and modifications to fit your child's developmental needs.
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