Preschool Skip Counting Activity with Legos

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Building towers with blocks is one of the very first activities we do with our babies when they can sit on their own. But now that your child is getting a little older, you can take that activity to a whole new level with lego tower building and try our preschool skip counting activity with legos. This hands-on activity is perfect for letter c week since counting begins with C.

Related: Hands-On Activity for Letter B

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Lego bricks are one of the best purchases you can make for your child. If you do not already have one of these toys at home, I recommend this Duplo Lego Starter Set.

The Preschool Brain

When preschool children stack and count blocks, they are building neural pathways in their brains. These pathways provide hooks for all future math learning, so that’s a pretty important development step. Neural pathways are forming at an incredible rate from the time a baby is born until they turn five years old, so preschool is the perfect time to introduce fun learning activities to create those hooks!

Even when it doesn’t seem like your child is learning, don’t quit. You cannot see all of the amazing development happening in their young minds, but it is happening every time you build one more tower, read that book one more time, or answer the five-thousandth question of each day. Hang in there mama!

Skill-Building with Lego Bricks

Here are the different skills you can practice with this activity, depending on your child’s readiness.

• Counting 1-20
• Tally Marks
• Tens Frames
• Patterning
• Color Recognition
• Skip Counting by 2s, 5s, 10s etc.

Building lego sets is a very visual way to practice skip counting. If your child has never tried it before, this skip counting activity will require a high level of parental guidance. It may involve simply showing the concept at this age.

Work together to group the blocks into sets of 2s, 5s, or 10s. (These are the best numbers to start with for skip counting.) Then place the sets in rows as shown in the image below. Skip count together, pointing to each set as you go. If your child is more advanced you can add groups of three or groups of four.

Practice using tally marks with the skip counting activity.

To practice using tally marks to keep track, group the legos into sets of five. Practice skip counting first, and then show your child how to make tally marks in groups of five. First you make four slash marks, and then you connect the four slash marks with a slash through the middle. Show your child how tally marks allow for skip counting by five just as easily as lego sets of five.

Once you’ve shown how to do tally marks, use tally marks to sort your legos by color and count each of the different colors. Use five different pieces of paper with the color’s name at the top. It helps if you use a matching crayon for each color word. As you sort the colors, make sure to add a tally mark for each brick. Don’t forget the fifth slash connects a group of four!

Practice using tens frames with the skip counting activity.

While you are working on sorting the legos into groups of ten, practice filling a tens frame. If your child is interested, try filling a tens frame with different numbers. You will color one block in the tens frame for each lego you stack. Try seven, eight, and nine. Point out how two rows with four boxes filled make eight and two rows with five boxes filled makes ten.

Here’s what you will need for this activity. (Choose one.)

• Lego blocks
• Mega blocks
• Unifix cubes

Instructions for the Lego Tower Building and Skip Counting Activity.

1. Have your child build the tallest freestanding tower they can with your blocks.
2. When the tower falls down ask your child to count how many blocks tall their tower was.
3. Have your child group the blocks by 10’s and count by 10’s together.
4. Have your child group the blocks by 5’s, 2’s or any other desired number and count correspondingly together.

Related: 32 Fun Activities for Kids to do in Their Own Yards