Number of the Day: Teen Numbers on a 0 to 20 Line

The number in the white card at the top of this 1st grade number of the day page is a teen number - 11 on this copy - and every box below asks for that same number in another form. Write the number word on handwriting lines. Fill the boxes before and after it. Split it into tens and ones. Shade it in two ten frames. Mark it in tallies. Find it on a number line that runs 0 to 20. Then count on three and count back three.

Teen numbers are worth a page of their own because they are the ones children say without understanding. Eleven and twelve give no clue at all, and thirteen through nineteen say the ones digit first and the ten second. Filling the tens and ones box beside two ten frames is what makes eleven visibly one ten and one, and doing that eight ways in a single sitting is what turns a recited word into a quantity. The 0 to 20 line keeps the whole range in view.

Print the PDF free and use it as a five minute opener with a fresh number each morning; the page never changes, so the child spends the time on the mathematics rather than on the instructions. Ten frames and tallies appear only on this version. The ten more ten less page moves to a 0 to 30 line and base ten blocks, and the up to 99 page adds a second digit. The number line page then isolates the find-it-on-the-line box.