Teach counting skills this school year with printable worksheets, educational games, digital activities and more elementary school resources designed to help students when they are learning to count. This extensive collection of curriculum-aligned teaching resources includes Base 10 flashcards, subitizing worksheets and more to save elementary teachers time on lesson planning. Created by expert teachers, each resource in this math collection has been carefully reviewed and curated by our team. That means it's ready to use in the classroom! You'll even find editable resources, plus differentiated options.

New to teaching counting, or just looking for fresh ways to engage your students? Read on for a primer from our teaching team!

What Is Counting?

It may seem obvious, but let's start at the beginning. The basic counting process involves a one-to-one correspondence between the items in the set and the counting numbers. It's a fundamental mathematical concept taught in the early years that helps our students develop number sense and mathematical skills. In the primary grades of elementary, students typically learn to:

Recite the numbers in sequence
Count objects by pointing to them and saying the corresponding number
Recognize and write numerals
Count forward and backward
Skip count by twos, fives and tens
Use counting strategies to solve simple addition and subtraction problems

Counting Vocabulary Terms

Let's dive into some common math vocabulary terms related to counting that students encounter in elementary school.

Numerals

Numerals is another word for symbols representing numbers, such as 1, 2 and 3.

Digits

Digits are the individual symbols that are used to make up numerals. For example, let's look at the numeral 12. The digits 1 and 2 make up the numeral 12.

Skip Counting

One of the early skills students learn in counting is the process of skip counting, in which they literally skip over numbers. A precursor to traditional addition, skip counting involves counting by a specific number sequence, such as 2, 4, 6, 8, etc. For example, when skip counting by 2s, a student would start at 2, counting out 4, 6, 8, 10 and so on.

Counting On

Counting on is a simple strategy for performing addition. Using this strategy, students start with a smaller number and count up by the number being added to find a sum. For example, if a student faces the addition problem 3 + 4, they would start with the number 3 and count on 4 more: 4, 5, 6, 7. In this case, the answer is 7.

Counting Back

The opposite of counting on is counting back. This strategy for solving subtraction problems involves starting with a larger number and counting down by the number being subtracted to find a difference. For example, a student who wants to solve the subtraction problem 5 - 3 could count backward from the larger number to find the solution. In this case, the larger number is 5. The student would start with 5, counting back 3 — 4, 3, 2. The answer is 2.

Tally Marks

Tally marks are a great tool for teaching early counting skills. When teaching counting with tally marks, you ask your students to draw a certain number of tally marks to represent a given quantity. For example, if a student is going to count to four using tally marks, they would draw a single vertical line and then draw three more lines next to it. Tally marks are typically drawn in groups of five, so if a student were asked to count to five using tally marks, they would draw a diagonal line crossing through the four vertical lines to represent all five. Understanding how to create sets of five tally marks can help students count to larger numbers easily. For example, if a student is asked to count to 15, they would create three sets of five tally marks.

Grouping

The term grouping has several definitions, depending on how it's being used. But when it comes to counting, grouping refers to a method of organizing objects into groups of equal size to facilitate counting. Sets of tally marks are a perfect example of grouping — they're a visual representation of grouping numbers into sets of five.

How to Teach Counting

Are you looking for some fun ways to teach counting in your classroom? The more hands-on and active, the better! In addition to the worksheets, games and other activities in this collection, try some of these fun ideas from our teacher team!

Use Snacktivities — Math manipulatives help young kinesthetic learners understand counting by making the concepts more concrete, and using snacks adds a real-world element to the lesson! Challenge students to string snacks like cereal loops for practice with grouping or simply to count out exact numbers of gummy bears. Just make sure no one samples the manipulatives!
Get Arty — Incorporating art into counting activities adds an element of fun. For example, ask kids to draw a certain number of circles, squares or other shapes and then count them out loud. This also helps students work fine muscles and develops their understanding of basic shapes.
Play Store — Even before students learn about currency, kids enjoy the role-play of "shopping" like adults. Use this to your advantage by setting up a classroom "store" and asking children to count out the correct amount of play money to purchase items.
Get Active — Encourage movement and help students get their wiggles out while learning. Ask children to count out loud while jumping or hopping, or play a game of Simon Says that involves specific numbers of a specific movement.

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