Christmas Skip Counting
Skip counting is an integral math skill that helps out in so many areas. It’s a skill that we just don’t pass. I like to put a lot of focus on it and continue to come back to it later for review.
Naturally that means I love to create many different kinds of skip counting resources for practice.
Christmas Skip Counting with Santa
Adding Santa to any worksheet or printable this time of year is almost guaranteed to be a hit with many kids. So I do try to make a lot of Santa-centric printable. And I love this skip counting with Santa one.
But if your kids aren’t as taken with a simple image of Santa, you might need to get their buy-in elsewhere.
I often like to give my kids a bit of a story, if you will, with my printables. So for this one I might say ‘help Santa climb down the chimney so he can leave toys under the tree’. If I’m really feeling it, I might even explain that his steps are so big that he only uses every 5th (or 2nd or 3rd) brick. So he’s counting by 5s to get to the bottom.
This method doesn’t always work because my kids are starting to see through my stories. But I still enjoy making up stories for them and I can withstand the eye rolls.
How to Use the Skip Counting Pages
The pages are really simple but you can approach them in a few different ways.
There are separate pages for counting by 2s, 3s, 5s, and 10s. And also one page that works on 2s, s, and 10s.
I’ve also left in a blank page if you want to count by a different amount. Or perhaps you have a younger child who just wants to count 1-10.
For skip counting, I have them start by coloring in the numbers on the far left (in order from top to bottom). After this is done we might touch each one and count the numbers out loud.
Next we trace the numbers in the middle column. I encourage my kids to use colored pencils or markers for this so it’s bright and colorful.
Lastly, we write in the numbers ourselves. For a challenge I like to cover up the two columns on the left.
