Part of my morning routine for the past few years has been counting the days in school with my little ones. We've then borrowed the American '100 days of school' celebration idea and as an infant department, had a 'maths morning' in which we celebrated all things '100'.

​This blog post gives a good overview of how I used this routine with younger children. It is wonderful for building number sense. If you are interested, you can click on the '100 days of school templates' picture above and download everything you need to make this simple routine part of your school morning as well.

I'm teaching Primary 5 (equivalent of 4th grade in the States or Year 4 in England) this year, however, so if I wanted to keep this routine, I needed to vary it a bit so that it was a productive use of class time. I love the routine (and you always have kiddos who benefit from reinforcement of simple place value concepts, even in P5), so at the beginning of the year, I thought about how I could extend this idea to develop my class's mathematical thinking.

At the moment, there are 2 main ways I'm using my 'count the days' ten frames.

First, we are consolidating our ability to get to the next multiple of 100 quickly and accurately. We all know how important it is for children to know their number bonds to 10. But getting to the next multiple of 100 is an equally important skill - and children often find it tricky.

​In the 'Counting the Days' set up to the left, we need 98 more days to get to 100. When we left school last Friday to start our 2 week October break (which is one of the reasons I'm finally finding the time to add a blog post), we had counted 37 days in school, which means we need 63 more days to get to 100.

​This daily practice getting to the next 100 is important. While many in my class understand how to do this, we still have more-frequent-than-I-would-like mistakes where the 'tens' add up to 100 because we forget that the digits in the units place also add to 10, making the last group of 10 that we need. Seeing the dots laid out on the 10 frames gives the kids a visual reminder that we need 9 tens in the tens place, because our final group of 10 will come from adding the units together.​

We are also using our 'Count the Days' routine to start thinking about and visualising decimal numbers. Our maths slot is right before lunch most days - once we reach lunchtime, we have completed half of our school day. So when I remember (which isn't every day!), we add half a dot just before lunch to represent the half day we have completed. We then write the total number of school days as both a mixed AND  decimal number. So if we have been in school for 36 1/2 days, that is also 36.5 days (and we read that as 36 and 5 tenths days, rather than 36 point 5 days).

​When we looked at place value at the beginning of the year, we talked about the first decimal place to the right of the decimal point, and how that showed us how many 'tenths' of one thing we had. We've also discussed how, in order to talk about part of a school day as a decimal, we have to divide one day up into 10 equal parts - and at our lunch break, 5 of those equal parts have passed, and we have 5 parts left. This is an idea that I reinforce most days when we add our 1/2 day. Repetition within a context that makes sense is great for developing number sense!

To give the kids a visual representation of the idea of 'tenths' of one day, I've made up the following fractional cards (below), which I've cut out, laminated and put on a scrapbooking ring (click on the picture below to get your own set). There are squares representing each tenth. I've made these into A3 size cards, but you can size them up or down as needed, as the file is a Powerpoint document and editable.

​If you are also counting the days of school with your class and have different ways you use this routine to extend their mathematical understanding, I'd love to hear your ideas in the comments!

Back to School is definitely here! One of the routines I like to start at the beginning of the year is 'Counting the Days of School'.

This is borrowed from the States, where many schools count each day they are in school, and then celebrate when they reach Day 100. That usually happens some time in February - and who doesn't need a reason to celebrate in cold, dark February?!

Along with providing some much needed cheer, however, this routine is wonderful for building number sense in our littlest learners. Last year, all of the classes in our infant department set up ‘100 Days of School’ displays, and we all counted how many days we’d been in school that year by adding a new dot into a 10 frame each morning. 

This routine is very simple and takes very little time, yet it gives children a very real sense of the size of different numbers, as well as reinforcing place value concepts. My Primary 1s (kindergarteners) did not have difficulties this year with figuring out the difference between 26 and 62 – using the ‘Counting the Days’ display gave them daily concrete experience with the reason why numbers in the 20s have 2 groups of 10, while numbers in the 60s have 6 groups of 10. And almost all of my P1s could easily read numbers beyond 100 at the end of the year (this is not something that could be said for my Primary 1s before I started this particular routine!).

This file includes a Title for your display, a page of 10 frames (just copy them to get the number  of frames that you need),and number cards for the decade numbers from 0-200. I use these cards to label each 10 frame once we fill it up. You can see this in the picture below to the left – this was my display last year. To the right, you'll see 3 images from the file you can download - as you can tell, I've given the display a bit of a face lift!

There are also some blank number cards (you can see these after the '90' below) – these are for writing the day’s number when you are NOT on the decade. For example, when you reach day 16, you would have the ‘10’ card next to the first 10 frame, then rub out ’15’ that you wrote on the blank card the day before, and change it to ‘16’. The card with ‘16’ written on it would then go next to the 10 frame that has 6 dots (in the picture, the last card says ‘177’ because that is how many dots total there are). There are number cards (counting by 10) in this pack going up to 200, as I found it was helpful to keep counting after we'd had our 100 day celebration.

In the States, the idea is that you count the first 100 days of school. On the 100th day there is a big celebration, with lots of activities based on 100.

Our infant department did '100 days of school' this year, and I'm pretty sure everyone enjoyed our 'celebration' (who doesn't like to make chocolate wheeto necklaces with 100 cheerios?). But in Primary 1, we carried on counting - this picture is from yesterday, when we hit Day 177. 

In this simple addition to our morning routine, place value and reading numbers to 100 and beyond is reinforced every single day. I like using the ten frames to keep track, as we use them often during maths rotations.

Little ones need repetition so much - especially for tricky maths concepts like place value. Luckily, they also LOVE repetition, so even though I am mightily tired of counting beyond 100, they are still tuned in!

As part of our mental maths, and before we get to dot cards, my class and I count how many days we've been in school that year. This is a fabulous idea I've borrowed from the American teaching blogs I follow.

We don't just add a dot to our ten frame and change the number on our counting wall, though. I have magnetic Base 10 materials that we use to make the number from the previous day, and then add 1 to it. When we have the time, 4 kiddos get to be involved in this process (one to make 177, another to add 1 to it and finish the equation, one to add another dot to our counting wall and one to change the counting wall number).

I'd love to hear how you develop number sense in your classroom. And any ideas on how I can use and/or adapt this routine for older children would be very much appreciated!