Skip Counting by 5s and 10s

My son is great at counting by 10s, but when it comes to counting by 5s, he needed a little lot of practice. I wanted to help him understand skip counting (i.e., the practice of skipping over every fifth or tenth number) as well as help him begin to memorize the sequences.

When he got home from school, first we listened to the “Exercise and Count by 5s” song by Jack Hartmann on YouTube. Before you listen, I must warn you that it is extremely catchy and should you listen more than once, you will have the tune stuck in your head for hours, possibly even days. My son loved it! The more we listened to it, the more he wanted to replay it.

After we listened to the song a zillion times, he circled every fifth number on a worksheet printed with the numbers one through 100. Then, he drew a square around every tenth number.

When he was done:

1. I gave him 10 dimes and 20 nickels, which he sorted.
2. I explained that each dime was worth 10 cents and each nickel was worth 5 cents.
3. I gave him 3 nickels and explained that if he counted the first three circled numbers on his page, he’d know how many cents he had. After he said “15 cents,” we counted together, “5, 10, 15.”
4. I continued to give him more nickels (e.g. “If I give you three more nickels, how many nickels do you have now? How many cents is that?” Then we counted, “5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30.”)
5. I repeated this with the dimes.
6. Then I asked him how many cents he had of each. “100 cents of each! 200 cents together!”
7. I told him that 100 cents was equal to one dollar and asked him how many dollars’ worth he had. “Two dollars!” he exclaimed excitedly. He felt rich!

Afterwards, he fed the coins to his piggy bank.

A PDF of this worksheet is available to anyone that wants it. Just click here to download.