Skip-Counting Secrets: Jumping by 2s, 5s, and 10s
Look down at your shoes. You have 2 feet. Now think about your whole class - if 10 friends each have 2 feet, that's a lot of feet to count one at a time! Skip-counting is a trick that lets you count groups of things fast, by jumping over numbers instead of saying every single one.
What You'll Learn
By the end of this lesson you will be able to: - Count by 2s all the way to 20 - Count by 5s all the way to 50 - Count by 10s all the way to 100 - Use skip-counting to count groups of objects quickly
Counting by 2s
When you skip-count by 2s, you say every other number: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20. Try clapping once for each number! A pair of shoes is 2 shoes. Two pairs of shoes is 4 shoes. Ten pairs of shoes is 20 shoes - and you counted it by saying only 10 numbers instead of 20.
Counting by 5s
Skip-counting by 5s means you jump 5 numbers at a time: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50. Look at your two hands - each hand has 5 fingers. If you hold up both hands, that's 5, then 10. Three friends holding up both hands would be 5, 10, 15 - 15 fingers total!
Counting by 10s
Counting by 10s is the fastest jump of all: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100. A dime is worth 10 cents. If you had 7 dimes, you could count 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 instead of counting seventy pennies one by one!
Hold up all ten fingers. Count them by 2s (2,4,6,8,10), then try counting the same ten fingers by 5s (5,10). Same fingers, different jumps!
Match each number sequence to the correct skip-counting pattern.
Terms
Definitions
Drag terms onto their definitions, or click a term then click a definition to match.
If you skip-count by 5s starting at 5, what number comes after 20?
You have 6 pairs of socks. How many socks is that if you count by 2s?
Skip-Counting Scavenger Hunt
Find 10 pairs of shoes in your home (or draw 10 pairs if you can't find that many). Line them up and count all the shoes out loud by 2s. Then find something that comes in groups of 5 (fingers, star points) and count those by 5s. Write down both totals on paper and show an adult what you found.
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