More Skip Counting

Bear and I had made ten bead chains using pony beads and pipe cleaner a while back.  Today I pulled them out again along with some number cards numbered 10 to 100.

I pulled out a card - 10 - and picked up a ten bead chain.  I counted each bead and established with Bear that there were indeed 10 beads.  Then I chose a second card - 40 - and told Bear I didn't want to count all those beads - it would take too long.  "Hmmm,"  I thought aloud.  "40 is 4 tens.  I could just take 4 of these ten bead chains and then I would have 40!  Let's count them this once, just to make sure."  Bear then helped me count the beads.

Next I had Bear choose a card.  She chose 50.  We laid out 5 tens chains and counted by ten.  10, 20, 30, 40, 50. 

 

 Here's how I had it set up for her, on a rectangle of felt as a "playing board."  After she had completed a card, she placed it to the right.

 We did this for all the cards then went to do something else. 

This was a very concrete way to show counting by tens.  I think making pairs of beads on pipe cleaners would make counting by twos more concrete as well, especially paired with the next thing we did which was to use a hundred chart and a Do-A-Dot marker to show counting by twos.

This, although fun to do, was a little too abstract still for Bear.