Monday. Tuesday.

Monday. 

Tuesday. 

Hmmm. Sounds a little boring. Doesn't sound exciting like Valentine's Day or 100th Day. Blech. Just two days in a row with NO SPECIAL EVENTS?!?! Does that even happen in Grade 1?

(That said, tomorrow is Rainbow Day!)

But, even our seemingly "average" days are always interesting!

In Math we are using what we have learned about skip counting to help us efficiently count large groups of items. 

Yikes! That's a big pile!

We began by grouping items into tens. Then we counted the leftovers by 1's. 

We can use skip counting to help us!
10, 20, 30, 40, 50, ... 51, 52, 53

Students got into pairs to count their own piles of manipulatives. Look how skip counting by 10's helps us count:

We also tried counting the same pile of items using skip counting by 5's:

5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50 ... 51, 52, 53!

We grouped the same heap of items into piles of 5 and counted the leftovers:

Why did we have the same count both times? Because, as one little one pointed out, "we didn't change the pile, we just changed how we counted them"!

The students are on their way to becoming skip counting experts, but please continue practice at home. These skills need to be automatic before being successfully applied in counting situations such as these. 

Please find time to practice skip counting:

• by 2's to 20

• by 5's to 100

• by 10's to 100

Learning to skip count helps us count large groups of items accurately and efficiently, and is a life skill.