How to Teach Skip Counting using Legos
Teaching the concept of skip counting to Boober was a bit of a challenge. I’ve mentioned before Boober has a BIG personality and he happens to be in the throws of being a threenager.
Our first lesson on skip counting did not go over well. We were watching an episode of Peg + Cat to introduce the idea of skip counting. Peg was counting by 2’s. After the episode, I continued with our lesson and asked Boober to practice his skip counting with me. I began to count “2,4,6,8”, when Boober gave me a funny look and said to me “Mom you’re doing it wrong!” He proceeded to correct me with “1,2,3,4,5,6”. It was clear he wasn’t getting the concept.
I let the lesson go for the day and pondered how to explain it to him better. He learns so much better by being hands on or with a visual so I knew that would help him. He is also into Lego’s just as many little kids his age are. That’s when I came up with a fun Lego activity to visualize what we are doing when we skip counting.
What you need is two different color Lego’s, about 10 of each color. If you have more of one color than the other that’s fine. Take your Lego’s and place than in two piles separated by color. For our lesson, we used green and white. You can substitute for what color you want.
Take your Lego’s and stack them green/white/green/white/green/white. First count to six while pointing at your individual blocks. Then count again but only pointing to the Green utilizing the skip count method. Explain to your child the white blocks are still there but since we are counting the green, we are counting faster. We know the blocks are there but because of that we can count twice as fast!
Then you can move on with a ratio of 4:1 colored blocks and start on the concept of skip counting by 5’s!
I hope this little trick helped!
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Thanks for this Lego idea! I will begin by using my pre-K students themselves as counters (I will give them ordered numbers to hold), then take up every other number and count them again . This will further illustrate that their odd numbered friends are in fact still there. The Lego can be used as a center. Thanks again,
I love that idea! Thank you for sharing.