Step-by-step tutorial
Step 1
My six-year-old is not too thrilled with worksheets. I really want her to feel confident with math and not begin to think that it is boring or hard or something to be avoided. So, on a beautiful fall day, we decided to get outside and combine one of her favorite outdoor games with math concepts. (But she was having so much fun that she didn't even realize that we were doing math. Shhhh! Don't tell.)
Together we drew our hopscotch grid, as we've done many times. Then I told her about the new twist to our game. We were going to play hopscotch by twos. She was game, and filled in the numbers.Step 2
We played several rounds of hopscotch by twos. By this time, her brothers had come over to see what we were doing and they wanted to play, too. We challenged them to figure out what we were doing. That was fun. They studied the board for a minute, and my eight-year-old figured it out.
Step 3
I asked my daughter if she'd like to play hopscotch with some other numbers. She chose fours and set to work making a hopscotch grid using 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, and 28. She's only 6 and we had never counted specifically by fours before. I love that she was able to figure this out!
Final result!
We kept playing with our twos and fours. My daughter didn't really want to explore skip-counting any other numbers that day, but I hope we will in the future. It was a super fun way to learn, get some exercise, practice writing numbers and have a great time together. What numbers will you skip count?