January 2026

Here’s the thing: my daughters are collectors.

Every neighborhood walk requires a bag for treasures — leaves, rocks, seed pods. My attempts to tidy up the house are regularly derailed when a purse or pouch reveals yet another “very important” assortment of tiny things.

But when I recently learned about counting collections — a classroom math routine I had never heard of as a middle school teacher — I found a silver lining to their collecting habit.

Here’s the heart of it:

1. A child chooses a collection.

2. They decide how to count it.

3. They work toward answering: “How many are there?”

That might mean sorting first.

It might mean counting one-by-one.

It might mean grouping items into sets of 2, 5, or 10.

Aha! We can put those collections to use for early math skills! You only need time and stuff, and we have collections of stuff in abundance!

Think:

• Rocks

• Coins

• Beads

• Blocks

• Goldfish crackers

Here are a few recent examples from our lives:

Next time your child starts collecting something (and you know they will), pause and ask:

• “How many do you think you have?”

• “How do you want to count them?”

• “What’s a good way to keep track?”

These all would have been great questions as my daughter Janelle tried to count these pinecones! If she lost count using this method, she’d be stuck starting all over.