An abacus is an excellent way to help children realise the importance of place value. This week we have published two sets of year 2 maths worksheets on the abacus. The first asks children to read the numbers from the abacus and the second asks for an abacus to be drawn. All numbers are 3-digit, [...]

Plenty of practice here at counting on in fives, right up to 100. As confidence grows children should recognise the patterns involved with counting in fives. The units digit is always a five or zero. They alternate, also making odd and even numbers. Don’t mistake the ability to count up in fives with knowing the [...]

Trying to count a large number of objects can be quite daunting and it is very easy to miscount or forget where you have got to. One solution is to simplify the task by grouping objects into tens. if this is a physical exercise they can be moved into separate areas but if counting objects [...]

Here we have another set of pages to help with counting on in tens from a 2-digit numbers. A little care needs to be taken with these as the question asks, “How many tens did you count?” So, when counting in tens from 23 to 43 the answer is 2 (tens), not twenty. Many children [...]

Here is another of our suggestions for practical activities that you can do with your children at home. Like most it is a fairly obvious, but very helpful activity, but not necessarily one that you would think of doing. Learning to count is usually a very visual activity, but it is also a good idea [...]

One of the reasons that we are able to count a number of objects quickly is that we recognise the pattern. Dice patterns are an obvious example of this – we recognise the pattern of four dots in a square with the fifth in the middle as 5 without actually counting them. Children starting maths [...]

Lego bricks, multilink, similar building blocks or just cubes are an excellent resource for helping with counting. Here are just two ideas for building towers, including counting up in ones as it is built, and down in ones as it is taken apart. Build two towers and comparing the number of bricks leads to more [...]

Here are four great maths worksheets for those children who are confident with counting in ones and are ready to move on to counting up in tens from a teen number and then any 2-digit number. Whilst the four pages concentrate on the same skill, they are all very different. Don’t be surprised if your [...]

Glove puppets are really popular in reception classes as a way of engaging children’s attention and there are many maths activities that they can be used for.This activity involves the glove puppet making mistakes in counting and the children have to correct the mistakes. Children are more than happy to go along with this and [...]

We usually think of counting on as being counting in ones, but the Primary Framework expects children to be able to count on in larger steps. These four worksheets concentrate on counting on 3, 4, 5 or 6 from a single digit. Your children will probably be confident enough to give some of the answers [...]