Recommended Age: 4 and ½ to 5 and ½ years
Purpose: To give the child another means of counting in a series (skip counting) and more practice in linear counting. Skip counting also prepares the child for multiplication
Level of Parent Involvement: Low, once the adult demonstrates the activity the child may work independently
Prerequisites
- The child must be able to recognise the numbers and quantities of numbers up to ten
- The child must have worked with the teen beads and boards and can count onwards from ten
- The child must have worked with the ten’s beads and boards
- The child has worked with the 100 chain
Materials
- The short chain of 5
- The square of 5
- A small mat
- Labels
- OR if doing this exercise from home see skip counting PDF (use only the 52 chain and labels)
Preparation
- Print skip counting PDF
- Cut out labels (only the 52 chain and labels)
Steps
- Invite the child, introducing them to the short chains
- The child may choose the colour of the short chain they would like to work with, depending on the chain, indicate to child which sized mat they will need (for the purpose of this presentation we will use the example of the short chain of 5)
- Show the child which labels, and the square of 5 to put on their tray (box of light blue labels corresponds with the colour of the chain)
- Place the chain on the mat (horizontally) and show the child how to carry the chain by holding one end of the chain with their left hand the other with their right, holding the chain horizontally in front of their chest
- Place the square of 5 on the mat
- Inform the child that if we stretched out the square of five it would look like the chain
- Fold the chain counting one five, two fives, three fives four fives, five fives
- “Five fives is the same as the square of 5”, superimpose the square of 5 on top
- Unfold the chain and invite the child to fold the chain in the same way
- Introduce the labels to the child, noticing they are the same colour but different sizes
- Invite the child to sort the labels by size
- Count the beads placing the labels as per the image below, you may need to remind the child after labelling the first bar that from now there will only be a label for the last bead of each bar
- When you place the last label, 25, inform the child “the square of 5 is 25, or 5 fives is 25
- You may also read the labels with the child (1,2,3,4,5, 10, 15….) making a point that it is quicker than counting each individual bead)
- Remove labels, mix, invite the child
Variations
- The child may work with any of the other short chains
- Count and label both short and long chains so child can see the relationship
- Making shapes with chains (red makes a point, green makes an angle, pink makes a triangle, yellow makes a square etc.)
