Counting up and down: The best activities for this are ones that engage the
kids
and
whose actions etc give them some reinforcement of the size of the number they are hearing or
saying. The simplest way of doing this is getting louder and louder as they count up, then
quieter and quieter as they count down. This can be combined with actions in ―Growing
Numbers‖, a TPR activity in which they start crouched down with their heads down and their
arms around their knees for ―1‖ and get bigger and bigger as they count until they end up
stretched up high for ―10‖. Stepping backwards and forwards as they count also works in the
same way. There are also plenty of story books and songs for counting up and down, e.g:
Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed
Five Little Ducks Went Out One Day
TenLittleIndians
One Little Finger (Tap TapTap)
Ten Green Bottles Hanging on the Wall
There Were Ten in the Bed (and the Little One Said Roll Over) There aren‘t many actual games for counting all the way from 1 to 10, but the teacher
could stop early or make a mistake and get the students to correct them. Alternatively, they
could add another challenge that makes it more difficult for students to get from 1 to 10, e.g.
having to throw a ball back and forth without it touching the ground as they count, or counting
as they stack up blocks to make a tower. You could also finish all classroom games when one
"SCIENCE AND EDUCATION IN THE MODERN WORLD: CHALLENGES OF THE XXI CENTURY" NUR-SULTAN, KAZAKHSTAN, JULY 2019 82
team reaches ten points and ask the class to count the points before they go on to the next
activity.
