Skip Counting on the Hundred Board
Using a completed hundred board, the child counts by twos, fives, tens — eventually by every number from 2 to 10 — and marks each number they land on. The marked squares form striking visual patterns, planting the seeds of the multiplication tables.
Materials
- A completed hundred board or a printed hundred chart
- About 50 small markers: glass gems, buttons, dried beans, or pennies
- A crayon or colored pencil, if working on a printed chart instead of a board
- Paper and pencil for recording the numbers counted
No materials at home? Use the virtual Hundred Board.
Before this lesson
Aims
Direct
- To count fluently by 2s, 5s, 10s, and eventually every number from 2 to 10
- To see each skip-count as a pattern of positions on the board, not just a chant
Indirect
- Direct preparation for the multiplication tables and the bead chains
- Early experience of multiples, which later becomes factors and divisibility
- Pattern recognition: columns for 2, 5, and 10; diagonals for 9 and 11
Presentation
- 1 Sit with the child in front of the completed board with a bowl of markers. Start with counting by 10 — the easiest and most striking pattern.We already know how to count every number. Today we will count and skip.
- 2 Count ten squares aloud together, tapping each one, and place a marker on the 10.One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine — ten! We mark where we land.
- 3 Count ten more from 11, and mark 20. Continue until 100 is marked. Then step back and look.Ten, twenty, thirty… look, they all wait in one line at the edge.
- 4 Read the marked numbers together from top to bottom, pointing at each. This chant — ten, twenty, thirty — is the skip count.
- 5 Another day, repeat with 5, then with 2. Let the child predict where the next marker will land before counting to confirm it.Where do you think the next one will be? Count and see if you were right.
- 6 To check the work, count the plain squares between two markers — there should always be the same number in every gap. Recounting, not the adult, decides what is right.
Points of interest
- The patterns themselves: full columns for 10 and 5, stripes for 2, a diagonal for 9
- Predicting where the next marker lands and confirming it by counting
- Numbers that collect many markers across different days — 20, 30, 60 keep getting chosen
- Chanting the marked numbers rhythmically like a song
Control of error
- The gap between markers: every gap must hold the same count of unmarked squares, so a mistake shows as an uneven gap
- The broken pattern — a marker off the column or diagonal is visible at a glance
- In the virtual board, the Check button marks any missed multiple and any wrongly tapped square exactly
Vocabulary
- skip counting
- counting by twos (fives, tens…)
- multiple
- pattern
- diagonal
Variations
- Say the in-between numbers in a whisper and the landing number in a strong voice before marking it
- Skip count starting from a marker in the middle of the board and continue to 100
- Use two colors of markers for two different counts (2s and 5s) and find the numbers wearing both
Extensions
- Record each skip count in a notebook as a number line: 4, 8, 12, 16 …
- Count backward down the marked squares: 100, 90, 80 …
- Ask which numbers between 1 and 20 never get a marker for 2s — the child rediscovers the odd numbers
Follow-up work (pencil & paper)
- Print skip-counting practice sheets where the child fills in missing numbers in sequences like 5, 10, __, 20, __.Printable: Skip Counting
- Print a blank hundred chart and have the child color every multiple of one number with a crayon, making a pattern poster for the wall.Printable: Hundred Chart Puzzles
- Write one skip count per day from memory in a notebook — twos on Monday, fives on Tuesday — then check it against the board by recounting.
What comes next
The bead chains take up these same skip counts next, in Bead Chains and Skip Counting: the child counts physical chains of bead bars and labels every multiple with an arrow, walking the path that leads straight to the multiplication tables in the memorization work.
Next in this strand: Bead Chains & Skip Counting