Fast Counting to 100 or 120 Math Trick Free PDF
This is a fast counting to 100 or 120 math trick ON PAPER for children to play on parents, they love it! Free printable and YouTube demonstration of fast counting to either 100 or 120. See a complete blog post about this “magic” math at the Castle View Academy blog, as well.
CCSS.Math.Content.1.NBT.A.1 Count to 120, starting at any number less than 120. In this range, read and write numerals and represent a number of objects with a written numeral.
Math trick for first graders: Children to show how smart they are with this trick, to parents and older siblings, as they will “win.” This is a free printable that has children circle numerals in order from 1 to 120 and there is a way to do this quickly and in order. The printable has four pages of options, explained on page 2. So using any one of the pages, children learn the secret of looking for one number in each quadrant at a time, going in order, and in a clock wise circle. The video below shows one person working quickly (reaching 44) while the other gets to a lower number. One knows the trick, but the other doesn’t! This can be fun for students of all ages, or even at a party.This video helps teach the trick with one child knowing the trick before the other one knows it. It is so interesting the boy figured out that it was counting by 4’s and not a more simple method of going in a circle. The young girl knows what quadrants are!
And here is a quick demonstration YouTube video.
Start with 1 to 100 as shown in the video as it is fairly obvious and the children will be successful. Then try the 1 to 120 page, which again is obvious. Pages 3 and 4 have numbers in a somewhat random fashion, so those are harder. The children will want more copies of everything so tell them one thing they can do is use a different colored pencil each time and reuse paper. They can play blue or red games, for instance. A real challenge is to play any of the pages backwards.
Organizing thinking in math is important for children to learn and this really makes a point! Ask the children what they notice about the numbers in each quadrant as their are some good observations they can make.
Have fun! Carolyn
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