Tally marks: the first time a kid counts by fives without noticing

We kept a tally on the back of an envelope of how many times the dog barked at the mail carrier in a week. By Wednesday my five-year-old was counting the bundles in fives and adding the strays on the end, which is more arithmetic than she had done all month and she didn't notice she was doing it.

What the sheet looks like

The tally marks worksheet prints a grid of boxes in one of three activities. Draw tally marks for each number gives a number and empty space. Count the tally marks prints the tallies, bundled the proper way with four vertical marks and a diagonal across them, and leaves a line for the number. Mixed does half of each. The number range runs 1 to 10 for kindergarten, 1 to 20, 1 to 30, or 1 to 50 for second grade, with 10 to 24 problems a page and an optional answer key.

Why it works

• The diagonal fifth mark is the first time most children group anything. Bundles of five lead straight to skip counting and, a year later, to tens and ones.
• Drawing tallies practices one-to-one counting. Reading them practices counting by fives. The Mixed page makes the child switch between the two every other box.
• Tallies show up again in first and second grade data lessons. A child who can read three bundles and two strays as 17 at a glance is ready for them.

Who it suits

Kindergarten is 1 to 10, draw only, ten problems. The 1 to 50 range in Count mode is a real second-grade task; ten bundles in a row has to be read as fifty. The sheet after this one is the graphing worksheet, where tallies become bar graphs and the counting has a purpose.

Keep a real tally going somewhere in the house too. The sheet makes more sense when the marks mean something.