Step 31: Counting to 100
10’s
When your child’s counting extends from 20 up to 100, the hard parts are the changes in 10’s. Those are the parts to give special support and practice. Once your child knows the sequence of the 10’s, it is usually very easy for them to fill in the changes in 1’s. For example, they will quickly learn to count “70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79.”
Skip count by 10’s
When your child gets stuck counting between 1 and 100, it is usually at a transition in 10’s. Typical questions to help your child get unstuck are: “What comes next after the 60’s?” or “What comes before the 50’s?” Practice skip counting by 10’s to help with this. If your child can produce the 10’s from 0 to 100 forward and backward, then they will be ready to answer those questions about which 10’s come next or before.
Use objects
Make this counting have more meaning by practicing it using a large group of small objects, such as pebbles. Gather together 100 of these objects and put them in a big pile off to the side. As your child counts up from one, pull over one object at a time with each number and include it in the current group of objects. Each time a group of ten objects is formed, put that group together in a special tens area. As the numbers increase, the tens area will have more and more groups of tens. By the time your child is in the 50’s, there should be five groups of ten and a small collection of left over ones.
You can also do this practice in reverse by starting with ten groups of tens and then taking away one at a time as your child counts down from 100.
Count both directions
Children often become really good counting quickly and automatically upward from 1 to 100, but then have trouble counting in the opposite direction. Counting from 100 to 1 forces more thought about the 10’s transitions and helps with understanding the numbers better in general.
100 number chart
Having a ten by ten 100 number chart going from 1 to 100, or from 0 to 99, will help your child see the pattern of the numbers. It will make it particularly clear how the tens place stays the same for ten numbers and the ones place keeps changing.