BatTASTIC Math

As a first grade team, we determined that a focus on skip counting was a must.  We decided to write our first SMART Goal around this concept.  Therefore, I have been creating a plethora of activities to practice this skill.  I put a spin on one of our bat activities and a-skip-counting-we-went!
I started our math lesson by dumping out a whole container of counting bears, and told my students we only had 3 minutes to count them all.  I then took suggestions as to how we could count all of the bears in that time frame.  As a class we decided that counting by 5s would work.  Everyone jumped in and started grouping the bears into 5s.

We then learned that bats eat about 600 mosquitoes in one hour!  I broke students into 6 groups and handed them a page of mosquitoes.  Their job was to create a plate of 100 mosquitoes.  They had to work as a team to cut, sort, and count their bugs.  

Some groups wanted to sort by 10s and other groups sorted by 5s.

In the end, we skip counted by 100s and now have the perfect visual representation.

My kiddos did an awesome job working together, sorting, counting, and completing the activity.

What are some skip counting activities you do with your students?

Be sure to head over to a Burst of First to see what other teachers are up to.