The goal of this activity is to allow students to discover they already know how to count by 4's, 6's, and 9's from their knowledge of counting by 2 and 3.

Materials:

• Paper

• Tape

• Stickers or Stamps

• Envelope (to hold students' counting strips)

Start by cutting strips of paper (about 3" by 1") and handing them out. Each student should have about 20 strips. Have students place two stickers (or two stamps) on each strip.

Once students finish, practice skip counting by 2's by lining up their strips of paper and pointing to each group as they count.

Have students collect a few strips and ask them how many stickers they have collected. Highlight their ability to count by 2's quickly to determine the total quantity. This is an excellent place to begin setting up multiplication by using phrases such as "you found 3 strips of two stickers is 6, or 3 groups of 2 is 6." Encourage students to use similar phrasing to communicate their own results.

Next, have students tape together two strips to make groups of 4 stickers. Ask students how many stickers are in each group now (4). Highlight that 4's are nothing more than two 2's. Since we can count by 2's we can also count by 4's!

Now have students create strips with three stickers (or stamps) and repeat the process. What can we count by when putting together two strips of three? (We can count by 6!).

To conclude, ask students if there are any other values we can count by using 2's and 3's. Students should determine we can count by 6's using 2's as well, or 8's by combining two of the four strips. Students can also use the strips to count by 9's by combining 3 of the three strips.

Repeat one more time with 5's to see that two five strips gives us groups of 10. Students do not need to fluently count by 4, 6, 8, 9, and 10 at this time. The goal is simply to introduce the idea that just as we skip counted by 1's to count by 2's we can skip count our 2's to count by 4's or our 3's to count by 6's.