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Counting to 10 songs for a preschool classroom: up, then down
Which of our songs count up to ten, which count down from five, and why a class needs both before the numbers mean anything.
Counting up is a list. Counting down is arithmetic. A child who can say "one, two, three, four, five" has learned a song. A child who can say "four little monkeys" after one falls off has learned that five take away one is four, without anyone saying "take away". A classroom needs both, and it needs the list first.
Counting up: one to ten
Numbers Counting to 10 with Ice Creams is the one for the list. It counts ice cream cones from one to ten and runs just under nine minutes, which is long for a single sitting, so use it in pieces: the first numbers one day, the rest the next. The counting is slow and sung, so there is room to say each number with it.
Two of the shorter songs also count to ten in the middle of doing something else. In Do You Know That I Love You the narrator counts ten love hearts floating in the air. In Santa's Coming an elf's presents are counted from one to ten, one question at a time. Children who have the list from the ice creams will count along with these without being asked, which is how you find out who has it.
Counting down: five to one
Once the list is in, counting down is where the numbers start to mean something.
- Five Little Monkeys drops one monkey a verse. Five, four, three, two, one. The hand actions do the subtraction: a finger folds down each time.
- Five Little Friends in a Flying Saucer does the same with a spaceship, and adds left and right: the friends "looked left and right but they didn't like the sight". Point both ways while it plays.
Both are counting rhymes with a story attached, so the number is never the point of the verse. That is what makes them work. Nobody is being tested.
A week that uses all of them
- Monday and Tuesday: the ice creams, in two halves.
- Wednesday: one of the short songs with counting in it, to see who counts along.
- Thursday: Five Little Monkeys, with the fingers.
- Friday: the flying saucer, with the pointing.
Every video is free to play in a lesson and runs no personalised advertising. The counting and alphabet videos are listed with their running times on the teachers page.