Skip counting for Classical Conversations is a great tool! I love how it prepares our kids to understand and know their multiplication facts. But sometimes I feel like I need to explain it better to my young learners…what exactly are we doing when we skip count? Here are some suggestions to help make skip counting more meaningful, plus some cool tips for memorizing those facts.
Week 1: Skip Counting the Ones
- Hop on 1 foot and count the ones. (Imagine with the child that you’re counting the number of footprints you would leave on the ground.)
- Put Flash cards in order (you can purchase the series of flashcards I developed here).
- Flashcards are color coded for each series, so it will be easier to put back in the correct stack.
- Ways to utilize these cards:
- Help child put flashcards in order together, then sing the skip counting song a couple times. The process of touching the cards and putting them in order helps the memory process. Turn some of the cards over and see if your child can sing it through with some of the numbers missing.
- Have younger children trace a couple of the cards with a wet erase marker (to help with number formation).
- Later, when the child is more familiar with the series, you can just hand them the stack and ask to put in order. I usually tell the child to keep it out when finished. Then we sing the song and make sure it is correct.
Week 2: Skip Counting the Fours
- Fours
- Lay out 15 toy animals that have 4 legs each (stuffed animals, hard toy animals, anything works as long as it has 4 legs).
- Ask child, “If we wanted to put socks on all of our animals, how many socks would we need? …Could you count all the feet using ones? (Yes) But would it take a long time? kinda… How about by twos? (Yes) That would be a little faster, right? How about if we could count by 4s?! That would be even faster!”
- Count all the socks you’d need by singing the 4s song while pointing to the animals. Ask child, “How many socks would we need?” (60) Your child may want to count by 1s too just to check and make sure that they get the same number.
- Extension: Say, “Wow that’s a lot of socks! Hmm… Ok I suppose some of them already have “socks”.” Take out any animals with hooves (pigs, cows, deer, horses, etc). Count by 4s to see how many hooves there are. Then count the remaining animals’ feet by 4s to see how many socks you’d need for them.
- The idea behind this extension activity is to help the child understand the meaning behind these songs! It’s ok if they don’t sing the full song for every example.
- OR lay out 15 toy cars. Count the fours while pointing to each car. Ask child, “How many wheels are there?”
Week 3: Skip Counting the Sixes
- Lay out the printable Ant Cards (from my flashcard set available for purchase here): Each ant has 6 legs.
- Count the sixes while pointing to each ant card.
- Ask the child,” How many ant legs are there?”
- Extension: Chocolate covered ants is considered a delicacy in some cultures. Give student a smaller subset of the ant cards. Ask them how many chocolate legs they’d be eating if they ate that many chocolate ants. Repeat with different amounts of ant cards.
