He can count wonderful forwards but backwards seems to give him so much trouble. It's frustrating because he knows his numbers. If I write or show him a number card he knows it (1-50) so why can't he skip count with the numbers right in front of him? What am I missing?
Answer by yelenam · Apr 17, 2014 at 01:01 PM
The only time I used skip counting backwards with my son was when we went on a road trip last summer. The route wasn't new to my son (we drove there a couple of times a month) and there was a particular stretch of 65 miles at the end that was very boring. So to combat all the "are we there yet"s, I told him that there are 65 miles to cover and that I'll say "meow" every 5 miles. From that he was to figure out if we were there yet. So at first it was skip counting forward by 5. But after a couple of times we drove along that stretch, it got old and my son started asking "how much longer". So I suggested skip counting backwards. He did need a lot of help with it though and was enjoying it much less than skipping forward. So we dropped it.
Answer by Shannon · Apr 17, 2014 at 07:20 AM
Perhaps he is so good at skip counting forwards because it is an audio-sequential pathway, much like learning the lyrics to a song. Have you ever tried to sing a song backwards? Getting in touch with his learning style/modalities might help you find the best way to teach him this skill.
Answer by Maria Droujkova , Make math your own, to make your own math · Apr 16, 2014 at 01:31 PM
It would help if you came up with 3-4 examples of tasks from your life where counting backwards is useful. Where do you use counting backwards? Once you give me these examples, I can help to design learning activities for your son around these tasks!