I'm so thankful our district got rid of math textbooks! I mean, who wants to teach math lessons using awful workbook pages day after day?? Not this teacher. We had a blast learning and practicing our skip counting last week. Most of my firsties come knowing how to count by 10's, about half proficiently counting by 5's, and maybe 1 or 2 who can count by 2's...which is pretty much like pulling teeth. Since it's going to take us awhile to "get good" at counting by 2's, that's what we started off our week with. I sent home a note a week prior to beginning skip counting requesting each child bring a pair of clean socks. Click on the picture to download the freebie! The following day we devoted to skip counting by 5's. I passed out manila paper to each student, had them trace their hand, number their fingers, and cut out. We glued them on a large chart, counted, and labeled them as we counted by 5's as a class. We glued this freebie in our math journal and labeled these hands. What a great tool to use to practice! Click on the picture to download the freebie! Our most fun day of all was learning to count by 10's {which most already knew so I had to make it fun!}. Cup stacking was big at our school last year, so what better way to practice counting by 10's. I bought enough cups so each student could make their own set. Together, we labeled each cup from 10 to 100. We practiced stacking our cups. Best of all, we had a counting by 10's cup stacking competition! AND got to take our set of cups home to practice!