Skip Counting Activities and Stations

We've spent the past week in my second grade class working on 2.NBT.2.  They are doing a great job skip counting and below are the activities and stations we did to practice.

To introduce skip counting, we spent time with counting collections.  I used pom pom balls, snap cubes, unifix cubes, highlighters, popsicle sticks, straws, etc.  Each item had a different number and was given to the partnership on purpose - to help with differentiation.  Higher kids had numbers in the hundreds - lower kids had numbers in the 40s-80s.  The first direction was just to count and tell me how many the had.  I stopped them about halfway through and we talked about how they were counting.  Most weren't organizing the items and most were counting by ones, so we discussed was this a good way or is there a better strategy?  I had two groups who had already figured out a strategy.  One group was counting by 10s and another by 20s.  So, we tried this with an example and decided skip counting was easier and it was easier if you grouped them. We went back to the counting collections and now counted while putting them into groups of 2's, 5's. and 10's.

Next, we worked on a skip counting chart to help us.  We colored all of the numbers that were by 2's yellow, circled all of the numbers by 5's in orange, and underlined the 10's in green.  The kids did a great job with this and then had a resource to use throughout the week (especially with the Skip Counting Task Cards (more info on this below)).

 

After making our own skip counting resource, we worked together to create a Skip Counting Anchor Chart.

 

Throughout the week, I introduced the activities below and then on the last day we used each activity at a station.

 

Station #1 -  Skip Counting Task Cards. I created these and have them in my TPT store here.  We used these whole group first and then they were put into a station.  This provides students with multiple chances to practice counting from and to different numbers.  It also goes up to 1,000 and has a few harder cards to provide differentiation.

 

 

Station #2 - School Bus Bump - I found this on TPT here at Lory Even's store. The kids love bump and now they can play it while practicing skip counting by 10's.

 

Station #3 - Ordering the Numbers - I found a ton of great skip counting resources on TPT.  Here is a sports one to practice skip counting by ordering the numbers.  This one is from a Series of First Grade Event's store, which you can access here.

Station #4 - Skip Counting Puzzles.  The kids loved putting these together. I found some cute Home on the Range ones in Haley O'Connor's store here.

 

Station #5 - Counting Collections - More counting practice with manipulatives - they were told to practice counting the items while grouping them in 2's, 5's, and 10's.

 

 

Thanks for checking out my skip counting ideas. Be sure to check out my Skip Counting Task Cards in my TPT store.