Counting to 10

Can you count to 5? Excellent! Today we are going to learn to count even further — all the way to ten.

The numbers 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10

After five come more friends:

• 6 — six, like the eggs in a carton
• 7 — seven, like the dwarves in Snow White
• 8 — eight, like the legs of a spider
• 9 — nine, like the planets we used to count in our solar system
• 10 — ten, like the fingers on both hands

Ten fingers

The easiest way to learn to count to ten is your fingers. Put both hands in front of you and count each finger:

one, two, three, four, five — that's one hand. And then six, seven, eight, nine, ten — the other hand.

Five plus five makes ten!

Counting fish

Look at the aquarium. There are fish of many colours. Point and count:

one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten!

Ten fish. The last number tells us how many there are altogether.

The number row

When you line the numbers up in order, you get the number row:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

It's like a roll call. Each number has its place. After 5 always comes 6, after 6 comes 7, and so on.

The staircase game

Imagine each number is a step. You start on 1 and walk up. To go back you walk down. Try it in your head:

• going up: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
• going down: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

Try it yourself

Try the Counting exercise — go for the rounds with 8, 9 or 10 balls.

If counting to 10 feels easy, take a look at Counting tens too — that one teaches the numbers 11 to 20.