My son’s kindergarten class is coming up on their 100th day of school. As part of their 100 day celebration the kids were asked to bring in a collection of 100 things that would be displayed in the classroom. The items had to fit in a sandwich bag, but could not food items. Examples given were pennies, paper clips, etc.
I went to my craft drawer and pulled out a bag of plastic pearl beads. They were big enough for Sean to count and would easily fit in the bag.
To help him with the counting I grabbed one of my paint pallets-the kind with wells.
We sat at the dining room table and I dumped a little pile of beads on the tablecloth. I showed him what to do and had him count them out one by one. We placed 1-10 in the first well, and continued with 11 -20 in the next and so on. When we were finished I explained that there were 10 in each well and had him count them by 10′s. Then he carefully scooped them up and put them in the bag for school.
It was a very simple lesson on counting but I think the visual helped and having something to physically count made practicing more fun. And of course my 4 year old whiz kid had to get in on the action so I did the same counting exercise with her.
