Counting Worksheets 1-20

Counting worksheets 1-20: count the objects, write the number in the box, then trace it, as two separate skills. 21 printable pages, free PDF.

A child who can recite one to twenty cannot necessarily count seventeen things. Reciting is a song; counting is touching each object once and once only, and stopping. This is a count-and-write book for 1 to 20 that keeps the two apart: every page starts with a group to count and ends with the numeral written down.

Counting worksheet for six showing five shapes in one row and one below — Page 7 – six, shown as five and one.

What is on each page

A group of shapes, arranged in rows of five.
A box to write the answer in, with no guides at all.
A tracing row for the same numeral, then a blank ruled row.

The shape changes from page to page — circles, stars, hearts, squares, triangles, apples — so the count is of a quantity rather than of one familiar picture.

Rows of five, and what they teach

Seventeen circles scattered on a page get counted twice and answered wrongly. In rows of five they get seen as three fives and a two. That is subitising, and it is the step between counting one at a time and doing arithmetic. It happens on its own if the layout allows it.

Counting worksheet for seventeen with shapes in rows of five — Page 18 – seventeen.

Touch every object

The single most useful instruction here is to make the child touch each shape as they say the number. Counting by eye is where the double-counts happen, and the habit of touching disappears by itself once the count is reliable.

Where it usually breaks down

Count and write worksheet for twelve: two rows of five, two more, and a box for the answer — Page 13 – twelve, the first page past ten.

Almost always at 13 to 16, and almost always because the child is chanting rather than counting. If page 14 goes wrong but page 4 is fine, the problem is the number words, not the counting — Number Words one to twenty is the book for that.

What comes next

The last page, twenty, is four full rows of five. A child who writes 20 there without counting every shape again has understood the rows, which is the point of the whole book.

Count and write 20 worksheet with four full rows of five shapes — Page 21 – twenty, four fives.

Number Tracing 1-20 if the numerals themselves are still shaky.

Printing this one correctly

In your printer dialog set Scale to 100% or Actual size, not Fit to page. Fit to page shrinks the tracing letters and they stop matching the size a child's hand is learning.

Plain paper is fine for crayons and pencils. If your child uses felt pens, 100 gsm paper stops the ink bleeding to the next sheet.