Everyday Math Monday: Let Me Count the Ways

Successful mastery of number skills is a little like the old joke about the tourist in New York City who asks, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” and the New Yorker answers, “Practice, practice, practice!”

Helping children to think numerically and providing them with chances to practice working with number facts are two things parents can easily achieve. Many of your child’s daily activities have numerical components, and when you find them and play with them together, everyone comes out ahead.

Activity: Let Me Count the Ways


The children in one family we know use a fluoride mouthwash every night after brushing their teeth. The directions say, “Rinse for one minute,” and this family turns that minute into an amusing math lesson. Things started off just by having a parent count to sixty to mark the time. Then the kids counted to sixty by holding up one finger at a time until they reached ten and the parent rolled up a small pellet of bathroom tissue and put it down. Six pellets = six tens = sixty, and you’re done!

When everyone got bored with tens, they moved on to fifteens, and so on through all of the combinations that make sixty. Using the timer on the kitchen stove, they got a chance to count back down from sixty, and, when that became tedious, they used a three-minute egg timer. This last item wasn’t particularly exact (you had to guess when two thirds of the sand had run out before you could start the rinse), but everyone got to work on estimation skills and have a good laugh about the race between the grains of sand and the kitchen clock!

Activities like this – light-hearted, impromptu, and using whatever is at hand – can take the rough edges off boring and repetitive events, and make practicing math skills more fun.

This activity can be applied in so many ways! When can you practice counting with your child in everyday activities?

Activity from Making the Grade: Grades 3-4, Creating a Successful Learning Environment at Home.