Encourage your child to practice skip counting by turning number patterns into an interactive game of catch. It will get your child moving and learning, ball in hand!
What You Need:
- One soft ball, two players
What You Do:
- Begin by telling your child you are going to practice skip counting while playing catch with the ball. Be sure to briefly review counting by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s.
- Sit or stand about six feet away from your child with the ball in your hands. Say the first number in the skip counting pattern aloud, and as you're saying it, toss the ball to your child. Now it's his turn to say the next number in the pattern! For example, when skip counting by 2’s, you say, “two,” and pass the ball to your child who will say, “four" and then pass the ball back to you. Then you say “six,” the next number in the pattern, and toss it back to him. Continue to play the counting game this way, and challenge your child to count as high as he can.
- After playing the counting game with multiples of 2, play the same way with multiples of 5 and 10. For an extra challenge, try skip counting by 3’s and 4’s.
Variations:
Turn the counting game into a fun language arts activity by practicing with parts of speech in place of numbers. Play catch back and forth as you take turns listing nouns. See how many nouns your child can list before getting stuck! Next, pass the ball to each other while naming adjectives. Afterwards, play the game while listing verbs. For an extra challenge, try playing the game with adverbs, too. The possibilities are endless with Count 'N Catch. And getting some of those terms and concepts off the page and into the body, really helps kids remember them!
By Carrie Ann Cain
Carrie Ann Cain has been teaching second grade for three years. She is certified in elementary education, special education, Spanish, and ESOL (teaching english to speakers of other languages).
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