Hey guys and dolls, how’s it going? As I was cleaning up my library area, and sorting and re-sorting
through my library books, I realized that I have a TON of books on counting. Whenever I’m doing a
thematic unit, or introducing a new topic, or digging deeper in a topic, I love to have awesome read-
clouds that go with our topic. Who am I kidding? I love to read books all of the time! So let’s kick it
off, shall we? Here are 9 of the best books for counting, in no particular order!
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I love to read Ten Black Dots by Donald Crews at the beginning of the school year! This book
does a great job of introducing early numeracy skills, including the names of the numbers, and a
picture of how many. I also love the fact its fosters their imagination, and shows them what they
can create. Oh yeah, and each page ends in a rhyme? Winner winner chicken dinner!!
Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed by Eileen Christelow is also a classroom favorite.
There’s nothing more entertaining than trying to avoid bedtime! The catchy tale is a great
way to introduce counting backwards as well as taking away one and seeing how many are left.
When one monkey jumps off the bed, I ask them how many are left, and then I ask them
how they know. I love to hear where their math reasoning skills are!
Ten, Nine, Eight by Molly Bang is a great book about counting backwards. I like that this book
uses objects that students would recognize from their own homes. We talk about how
we don’t only count when we’re at school, we can also count when we are at home. I then
encourage them to see if they can find some of the same objects in their home and count them.
Now, this book has a special place in my teacher heart. Count and See by Tana Hoban is a
fave of mine as well. The author is also a photographer, so she used her pictures to create
a counting book. I love that this counting book is a little different. In addition to the objects
and people that she’s taken pictures of, the opposite page has the number, the number word,
and dots to represent the number. This book has numbers from 1-20, and then after 20, it skips
by 10s all the way to 100! So I love that I can come back to this book time and time again!
Ten Little Fish is another great book that begins by counting backwards. I absolutely love the
graphics of the book, and I love to not only read this book, but we also have what I like to call
my earliest versions of number talks with this book. Each page also ends in a rhyme, so I can
check to see who figures it out!
Mouse Count is a great book for students to count by rote, but I also use it to introduce counting
on and combining amounts. The snake in this book gathers the mice by groups, so we talk about
how many he already has, how many he added to the jar, and how many does he now have in all.
And, it’s super duper cute to boot!
Ten Little Mummies is a book that I like to use after the first several weeks of school have passed.
By this point I have exhausted all of my other counting books!!! When I want to review counting
and talk about adding quantities, I pull this one out. This book begins by counting backwards as well,
and it also rhymes.
Ten Little Bears by Kathleen Hague is a counting rhyme that also counts backwards. I like to use
this book after we have already been counting backwards, and so with this book, I will read the
line, and then I let the students fill in the blanks.
This book is near and dear to my heart. It is actually a book from my childhood. It is a Little
Golden Book, and I still have my copy! In Ten Items or Less, Mandy and her mom are going to run
to the grocery store. While they roam the aisles, Mandy’s mom asks her if she wants to play
a counting game. Their goal is to get ten items or less, so that they can check out in the
express lane.
I absolutely love to read books to introduce and review any concept that we are going over
in class. I know that teachers love to do read-alouds during reading time, but we definitely need
to remember to do them during math time as well!! You can find them all right here!
Do you have some favorite counting books that aren’t on this list? Let me know so that I can
add them to my collection!
