Counting for Kids: Counting is the foundation of everything children do in maths. Before a child can add, subtract, or understand place value, they need a secure sense of number, and that sense is built through repeated, varied practice with counting activities that feel nothing like worksheets.
UK primary teachers working within the National Curriculum’s Number and Place Value strand know this well: Year 1 children are expected to count reliably to 100, and Year 2 pupils move on to skip counting in 2s, 3s, 5s, and 10s. Getting those foundations right matters far more than rushing on.
The trouble is that most counting resources for KS1 either sit entirely on a screen or rely on drills that switch children off after five minutes. What actually works, and what years of primary classroom experience confirm, is a blend of physical activity, purposeful play, and concrete objects children can touch and move.
LearningMole, a UK educational platform founded by former primary school teacher Michelle Connolly, has built a library of curriculum-aligned video resources that bring exactly this approach to life, giving teachers ready-made visual support and giving parents confidence about what to do at home.
This guide covers brilliant counting activities and games for KS1 children, organised around the Concrete, Pictorial, Abstract (CPA) sequence that underpins the UK’s Maths Mastery approach. You’ll find activities for the classroom, the playground, and the kitchen table – plus specific support for the tricky moments where children most often get stuck.
Children’s counting expectations are clearly set out in the UK National Curriculum, and knowing the milestones helps teachers plan targeted activities rather than generic practice. The table below summarises what Year 1 and Year 2 pupils are expected to achieve under the Number and Place Value strand.
| Year Group | What Children Should Know | Counting Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | Count to and across 100, forwards and backwards, beginning with 0 or 1, or from any given number | One-to-one correspondence; crossing the tens |
| Year 1 | Count, read and write numbers to 100 in numerals; count in multiples of 2, 5 and 10 | Number recognition; early skip counting |
| Year 2 | Count in steps of 2, 3, and 5 from 0, and in tens from any number | Skip counting; number patterns |
| Year 2 | Recognise the place value of each digit in a two-digit number (tens and units) | Place value as extension of counting |
One point that often catches children out: Year 1 does not expect children to count to 100 in isolation. The requirement is to count ‘to and across’ 100, meaning children should be able to start from any number and keep going. A child who can count from 1 but freezes when asked to count on from 63 has not yet met the standard.
“Knowing what the curriculum actually requires at each stage helps teachers pitch their activities precisely,” says Michelle Connolly, Founder of LearningMole and former teacher with over 15 years of classroom experience. “Counting to 100 from 1 is a much smaller achievement than counting confidently from any starting point – and many children are marked as ‘secure’ when they’ve only done the easier version.”
The Concrete stage of the CPA model is where counting understanding is genuinely built. Children who skip straight to numbers and worksheets often develop brittle knowledge that collapses when numbers get larger or contexts change. Every activity below uses physical objects that children can touch, move, and rearrange.
Hide individual Numicon tiles (or printed cut-outs) around the classroom or garden. Give children a number card and ask them to find the matching tile. Once found, they count the holes aloud to check. This builds number recognition and one-to-one correspondence at the same time. For Year 2 extension, ask children to find two tiles that combine to make a target number.
Give each child a laminated ten-frame and a small pile of counters (pennies, buttons, and dried pasta all work equally well). Call out a number and ask children to fill the frame correctly. The power here is visual: children can see at a glance whether five has been filled on the top row, which supports understanding of 6, 7, 8, and 9 as ‘five and a bit’. LearningMole’s maths video resources include visual ten-frame demonstrations that work well on a whiteboard alongside this activity.
Collect a jar of mixed small objects: buttons, pebbles, pasta shapes, and small blocks all work. Ask children to count out a specific number, moving each object to a separate pile as they count. The physical action of moving objects is important: it builds the link between saying a number and representing a quantity. Children who count verbally without moving anything often produce counts that are two or three out.
Each Monday, place a clear jar containing a small number of objects on the maths table. Children write their estimates on sticky notes and attach them to the jar. On Friday, count together. Over time, children develop number sense and the ability to judge roughly how many without counting every item. Start with quantities under 20 for Year 1; move towards 50 and beyond for Year 2.
Give each child a set of number cards 0–20 (or 0–100 for more confident Year 2 pupils). Call out instructions: ‘Show me one more than 8’, ‘Show me one less than 15’, ‘Show me the number that comes after 19’. The last example is deliberately chosen: the jump from 19 to 20 is where many children hesitate. This activity surfaces that hesitation quickly and gives the teacher immediate formative information.
Outdoor and kinesthetic counting activities are underused in KS1 teaching, but research into physical learning consistently shows that movement supports number retention in young children. These activities require minimal preparation and work in playgrounds, halls, and gardens.
Use chalk (or pre-made number line mats) to create a 0–20 or 0–100 number line on the playground. Call out instructions: ‘Jump to 7’, ‘Take 3 jumps forward’, ‘Where do you land?’ For skip counting, ask children to jump in twos and call out each landing number. The physical experience of moving along a number line helps children internalise the spatial structure of numbers in a way that a printed worksheet rarely does.
Write numbers on a large board or use number cards laid on the ground. Call out a number or a clue (‘one more than 9’, ‘two less than 14’), and children race to splat the correct number with a wet sponge. The competitive element raises engagement, and the physical action creates a memorable association with the number. A dry-run classroom version uses fly swatters on a whiteboard number grid.
Give children a simple recording sheet: ‘Find 3 different shaped leaves’, ‘Count 5 red things’, ‘How many steps from the gate to the tree?’ This connects counting to a genuine purpose, which is important for children who don’t yet see why counting matters. The recording sheet also introduces the idea of writing the count, bridging the concrete activity towards the abstract stage.
Children take turns throwing bean bags into numbered hoops (1–5 or 1–10) and keep a running total of their score. This introduces addition-as-counting-on in a context that feels like play. Emphasise counting on from the existing total rather than counting all from 1 each time: that shift from ‘count all’ to ‘count on’ is a key developmental milestone in KS1 maths.
Skip counting is where the National Curriculum begins to lay the foundations for multiplication. Before children can grasp the 2 times table, they need to count fluently in 2s. The same is true for 5s and 10s. The activities below move from concrete to pictorial, following the CPA progression.
Collect a pile of socks (clean ones are optional – a running joke that children always remember). Ask children to pair them up and count: ‘One pair, that’s 2. Two pairs, that’s 4.’ Once the physical pairing is secure, move to drawing pairs of dots. Finally, write the number sequence: 2, 4, 6, 8… The transition from objects to symbols follows the CPA model exactly.
Children stand in a circle. Each child holds up one hand. Count around the circle in 5s, touching each hand: 5, 10, 15, 20. When the number sequence becomes familiar, introduce the written sequence on a number line. The visual pattern of 5s (ending in 0 or 5) is something most children notice quickly once it’s pointed out, which gives them a self-checking tool.
A printed or laminated 100 square is one of the most useful tools in KS1 maths. Ask children to colour every tenth number – 10, 20, 30… – and describe what they see. The vertical column pattern is usually noticed immediately. Extend the activity by asking: ‘If I colour 7, 17, 27, 37… what do you notice?’ This connects skip counting in 10s to the concept of adding 10 to any starting number, which is a Year 2 place value objective.
| Skip Count | Concrete Activity | Key Pattern to Notice |
|---|---|---|
| 2s | Pairing socks, shoes, or counters | Even numbers; always ends in 0, 2, 4, 6, 8 |
| 5s | High-fives; hands on a clock face | Always ends in 0 or 5 |
| 10s | Counting bundles of ten sticks | Tens digit increases by 1; units stay the same |
| 3s (extension) | Groups of 3 objects in a line | No obvious unit-digit pattern; requires more support |
Two sticking points appear in almost every KS1 class. The first is the Zero Problem: children who confidently count from 1 often have a shaky understanding of 0 as a number with value (meaning nothing) that still has a fixed place in the counting sequence. The second is Crossing the Tens: the conceptual jump that happens at 9, 19, 29, 39 and so on.
Young children often treat 0 as ‘not a number’ because early counting experiences start at 1. Two activities help: first, counting down to 0 in physical contexts (‘We have 5 biscuits. We eat one. How many now? Keep going until… zero!’). Second, placing 0 at the start of the number line and asking children why it belongs there. The idea that zero means ‘none of something’ is straightforward once children have a concrete context for it.
When children hesitate at 19 or 29, the issue is usually that they have memorised a number sequence without understanding why 20 follows 19 or why 30 follows 29. A 100 square makes this visible: children can see that each row ends at a multiple of 10 and the next row starts with the next ten. The ‘Bridge the Gap’ activity asks children to mark the number before the bridge (19, 29, 39) and the number after (20, 30, 40) in different colours, then describe what changed: the tens digit goes up by 1, and the units digit goes back to 0.
This connects directly to place value, which is the next concept in the KS1 progression. Children who understand why the digits change when crossing a ten have a far stronger foundation for two-digit addition and subtraction.
LearningMole provides curriculum-aligned video resources and teaching materials for KS1 maths, including counting activities, number songs, and place value support. The platform’s resources are designed by experienced educators to provide teachers with ready-made visual support and help parents reinforce learning at home without creating their own materials.
For the topics covered in this guide, LearningMole’s library includes number line and 100 square demonstrations, skip-counting sequences in 2s, 5s, and 10s, and teacher-modelled CPA-style activities that map directly to National Curriculum objectives. Teachers can use these videos as lesson starters, home learning assignments, or support for children who need to revisit concepts at their own pace.
Parents looking for home support can access LearningMole’s free video content on YouTube, with over 260,000 subscribers and 19 million views. Subscription access includes the full library of 800+ curriculum-aligned videos, providing families with a structured resource that aligns exactly with what children are learning in school.
Explore LearningMole’s KS1 maths resources: learningmole.com. Watch free counting videos: LearningMole on YouTube
By the end of Year 1, children should count to and across 100, forwards and backwards, starting from 0, 1, or any given number. This is a higher standard than simply reciting numbers from 1. A child who can only count reliably from 1 to 20 has not yet met the Year 1 expectation. LearningMole’s KS1 counting videos cover the full range of Year 1 counting objectives, including counting forwards and backwards from larger starting numbers.
This is one of the most common KS1 counting challenges, and it has a specific cause: children who have not understood that each new decade starts the unit counting again from 0. A 100 square is the most useful tool here. Ask your child to find 19 on the square and then point to the next number. Most children can see that 20 is directly below it in the pattern. Explaining that the tens digit increases by 1 and the units digit resets to 0 gives children a rule they can apply at every crossing point: 29 to 30, 39 to 40, and so on.
Start with concrete objects before moving to number sequences. For counting in 2s, use socks, shoes, or pairs of counters. Line them up and count the pairs aloud: 2, 4, 6. Once your child is confident with physical objects, move to drawing groups of 2 and writing the sequence. The final step is reciting the sequence without objects. This Concrete, Pictorial, Abstract progression is the same approach used in KS1 classrooms under the Maths Mastery framework.
Manipulatives are simply physical objects that children can count, sort, and arrange. You do not need to buy specialist equipment. Buttons, pasta shapes, pebbles, pennies, dried beans, and small building blocks all work well. The key quality is that objects are small enough to count individually and consistent enough not to distract from the counting itself. Numicon and Multilink cubes are useful if your school already has them, but household objects are equally effective for home practice.
No. Finger counting is a valuable and entirely normal stage in early maths development. It represents the Concrete stage of the CPA model: children are using physical objects (their fingers) to represent numbers. The goal over time is for children to internalise number relationships so they no longer need fingers as a support, but discouraging finger counting before that internalisation has happened can actually slow progress. Most children naturally reduce finger use as their number sense becomes more secure, usually by the end of Year 2.
Skip counting in 2s, 5s, and 10s is a Year 2 objective in the UK National Curriculum, meaning children typically work on it at age 6 to 7. Some children encounter early skip counting informally before this: counting by 10s is often introduced in Year 1 alongside work on tens and units. If a Year 1 child is already confident with counting to 100, introducing counting in 10s as an extension is appropriate and helps build early place value understanding.
Three quick checks: ask your child to count on from a number in the middle of a sequence (not from 1); ask them to count backwards from 20; and ask ‘What number comes just after 29?’ A child with secure counting knowledge handles all three without hesitation. Difficulty with any of these points in a specific area to work on: starting from arbitrary numbers, backwards counting, or crossing the tens.
LearningMole’s YouTube channel offers free curriculum-aligned counting videos for KS1, including number songs, counting sequences, and teacher-modelled activities. Printable resources, such as 100 squares and number lines, are available through LearningMole’s platform alongside the video library. LearningMole’s subscription access starts from a low monthly cost and covers the full KS1 and KS2 maths curriculum.
Counting is not simply a stepping stone that children pass through and leave behind. The understanding built during KS1 – of how numbers relate to each other, how the tens structure works, and how quantities can be broken into parts – underpins every calculation children attempt in the years ahead. Time spent on concrete activities now saves significant remediation work in Years 3 and 4.
The activities in this guide are deliberately practical and low-prep, because the best counting activities are ones that actually happen rather than ones that sit in a planning folder. A jar of buttons on the kitchen table, a chalk number line in the playground, and five minutes of high-five counting before assembly are enough. Consistency and variety matter far more than specialist equipment.
Visit LearningMole’s KS1 maths collection at learningmole.com to explore counting videos, number activities, and curriculum-aligned teaching materials for Year 1 and Year 2.
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