Number Line to 100: Each Tick Counts Five

A hundred fits comfortably on one line here because each tick is worth five. Four lines cross this 1st grade number-lines page, every one labeled 0, 10, 20 and on to 100, with a single unnamed tick sitting halfway between each pair of tens. Two orange arrows point down at those halfway marks on each line, an empty dashed box above each, which gives eight answers. Every arrow therefore lands on a number ending in five, and the child has only to read the ten before it and take one step: sixty, then sixty-five.

The reasoning here is different from the pages where every tick is one. There is never more than a single step between a label and an arrow, so nothing can be lost in a long count; what is practiced instead is the pairing of tens and fives that runs all the way through place value. A child who can see that the mark between 40 and 50 must be 45, and who can say the fives in order across the whole hundred, is ready for skip counting on a hundred chart and for the halfway estimates that come later.

Print the PDF free and cover the labels on the fourth line with a strip of paper once the first three are done, to see whether the fives hold without support. The 0 to 50 counting in fives page is the same idea over half the range but with only three landmarks, which makes it harder rather than easier. The counting in tens page takes each tick up to ten, and the to 120 page carries the line past the hundred. Number of the day up to 99 works the same numbers in a different layout.