Fun Activities For Counting to 100 Using Picture books
The 100th day of school is a big day for kindergartners as they celebrate counting to 100! But what if your child or student is ready to count to 100 before the 100th day of kindergarten or what if you homeschool? This post’s purpose is to help give you some resources and activities to help your children or students extend their counting to 100 wherever they are at developmentally. If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I like to integrate picture books into math class. This post is no different. So read on to discover some fun ways to use picture books to develop counting strategies!
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Jack and the Beanstalk: Counting Beans
Read any Jack and the Beanstalk books and then do my counting beans activity. (There are dozens of great Jack and the Beanstalk books!) This counting activity helps children count to one hundred while developing place-value concepts. You just need a bunch of small beans and ten small Dixie cups. I label each Dixie cup with a ten. Then I use the beans and the cups to practice counting.
When I had my son practice counting, he, like many children, would often forget to start over with the multiple of ten when the numbers got higher. For example, he may say twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, twenty-ten, twenty-eleven, etc. The reason that this activity is so helpful is that the cups build place value while also help kids count by tens. If a child says twenty-ten, you can use the cups to count by tens: ten, twenty, thirty, etc. This will help them get over their learning hump. An additional bonus is that it’s really easy to get back on track if they get distracted and lose their place while counting.
This activity can also extend to double digit addition as students can add the cups (tens) and the then beans (ones). You can read more about this and other educational activities on my Jack and the Beanstalk Day post.
Note: Although, I used beans for Jack and the Beanstalk Day, you could use macaroni noodles or any other small objects to do the counting activity.
I Love You 100: Hundreds Chart
Danica McKellar’s Goodnight Numbers is one of our favorite bedtime books. Her sequel I Love You 100 extends those principles. It’s a sweet book where the parent and child try to outdo each other by quantifying how much they love one another. Then on each spread the reader is challenged to count objects on each page and then count the hearts on the inserted chart that resembles a hundreds chart.
Hundreds Chart
A hundreds chart is a useful tool for counting, teaching place value, patterns, and more. It is essential to every kindergarten classroom. I Love You 100 leverages the hundreds chart using a heart diagram in the corner of each spread. Then in the back matter, it explicitly tells parents how to use a hundreds chart.
Although, I prefer the paper copies, here are some virtual hundred’s charts that could be useful for a tablet of smartboard:
- Interactive Hundreds Chart | Math Playground
- Hundreds Chart Patterns | Math Playground
- Treasure Quest Hundreds Chart | Math Playground
Infinity
The last page of I Love You 100 ends with “Count on this with certainty: I love you to infinity.” See my Zero Zebras and Infinity post to help children think about infinity.
100 Mighty Dragons All Named Broccoli: Counting and Sorting
My son loves 100 Mighty Dragons All Named Broccoli by David LaRochelle! It’s just a fun book to read even without the math concepts! If I had early elementary students, I would make 100 dragons and stick them to the white board with painter’s tape or magnets. Then I would add and subtract dragons away along with the progression of the story.
However, for kindergartners and preschoolers I recommend focusing on how you could use 100 Mighty Dragons All Named Broccoli to emphasize counting and sorting skills. The last two spreads of the book have all the dragons and their names. I would make color copies of the spreads (and perhaps laminate them) and cut them out so you have the 99 dragons. The 100th dragon is on the last page and he’s the largest.
Sorting
You can sort by all types of dragon characteristics: blue dragons, orange dragons, dragons with hats, etc. You could even develop a Guess Who type game with the dragons.
Counting
If you are teaching counting, you could give students the dragon cards. I would vary the amount of cards given to each student depending on the child’s ability. For students who are struggling with counting, I would give them less cards, and I would give more cards to those who are getting close to counting to 100. I would emphasize that they should lay the cards down in rows of ten as they count to emphasize place value. For an added bonus, you can also have them count the dragons on the first page.
One Hundred Hungry Ants: Counting in Arrays
As students master counting objects in a line, they need to learn to count objects in more difficult arrangements such as rectangular arrays, circles, and scattered configurations. Although Common Core’s K.CC.5 asks students to do exactly that but within 20, it’s logical that they should be able to do count in arrays in larger numbers like 100 as well.
CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.B.5: Count to answer “how many?” questions about as many as 20 things arranged in a line, a rectangular array, or a circle, or as many as 10 things in a scattered configuration; given a number from 1-20, count out that many objects.
One Hundred Hungry Ants by Elinor J. Pinczes is the perfect book to help students practice counting to 100 using arrays. After reading the book, give the kids small plastic ants and have them form arrays mimicking the book. This also aligns to math practice standards 7: Look for and make use of structure.
Best Counting Book Ever: Counting and Early Addition
The Best Counting Book Ever by Richard Scarry is one of my son’s favorite counting books. There is a lot to it! You can simply use it as a counting book, but you can also use it to do simple addition problems. Plus, like all Richard Scarry books there is a lot of silly intricacy to the illustrations that your child will love. I will warn you if you read the whole book, it takes a while to read. Therefore, I often skip sections, but luckily my son can’t read yet, so he will never know! If your child is a fan of Cars, and Trucks, and Things that Go, be sure to use the Best Counting Book Ever when your child is working on counting to 100.
Great Estimations: Developing Number Sense
Great Estimations by Bruce Goldstone is a fantastic book to help students develop number sense. For preschoolers and kindergarteners, the first two spreads and the page about cherries are the most helpful (page 10). If you are in a classroom setting, these would be fun images to put under the Elmo or on the Smartboard. Then have students bring in 110 objects and have them create a group 10 and glue it on to a poster board. Then have them create a group 100 of the same object together and glue it on the same poster board. This will help students develop an understanding of the magnitude of multiples of ten helping with place value concepts. Having students estimate numbers aligns with math practice standard 3: Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
Conclusion
Counting to 100 is a big deal for kids! Luckily, there are some fabulous picture books and fun activities to support them. I hope you enjoyed some our favorites!
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More Math Lessons for Preschoolers and Kindergarteners!
If you like this lesson, check out some of my other math and STEM activities for preschoolers and kindergarteners.
- Using Ten Black Dots by Donald Crews to Decompose Numbers
- Numberblocks and Math Mondays: Making Math Fun for Toddlers
- Ten Flashing Fireflies |A Cross-Curricular STEM Unit on Fireflies for Math, ELA, Science, and Music
- Interactive Math and ELA Lesson using Ten in a Hurry by Lo Cole
- Enhance Learning with Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons: Math & ELA Connections
Save for Later
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Ladder and Friends Learn to Pray
Do you have a truck-loving kid? Are you looking for bedtime books that encourage positive character traits and feature community helpers? If so, I have the perfect book for you: Ladder and Friends Learn to Pray!
Many of the Christian resources I found for young children had cute little kids and cuddly animals. This was not appealing at all to my son; he wanted trucks and wheel and trains! So, I scoured Amazon looking for Christian books aimed at young boys, but I couldn’t find anything. Therefore, I decided to write my own. It should be available Summer 2026. Join my pre-order mailing list today to get the latest updates about when the book will be available. (Note: There is NO financial obligation at this time!)
