Another way to skip count is to count by 5's. In the lesson on counting by 2's it was shown how you can start at a number and skip the next number such as going from 2 to 4 to 6. When counting by 5's you can do the same thing, however instead of skipping one number we skip four of them. Usually when counting by 5's we start with the number 0 or 5 and get the following pattern.
0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90, 95, 100.
Counting by 5's in this manner is very simple as there is a pattern to pick up on. When you start with 0 or 5, every other number ends with either a 0 or a 5. Young children often find this pattern the easiest way to learn to count by 5's as it can be done without actually adding 5 to the previous number.
Even when not starting with 0 or 5, the pattern still exists. Lets start with the number 3 to see a similar pattern emerge:
3, 8, 13, 18, 23, 28, 33, 38, 43, 48, 53, 58...
As you can see starting with the number 3 we still get the same AB pattern, however in this case, every number ends with 3 or 8 and each number will alternate between those two endings. This can be a little more difficult, however is much easier if one simply writes out the pattern instead of trying to do it aloud.
Counting Money.
One of the reasons that counting by 5's is so important is that money comes in denominations of 5. When counting out 5 dollar bills or nickels, it is important to know how to count by 5's as it will save the time of adding up each additional nickel or bill. Many times when counting out money, you may have a stack of currency in which case you have two choices, count how many pieces you have and multiply by 5, or simply just count each bill by 5's. The latter saves a step which, when dealing with large sums of money, can lead to errors.