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4. Counting in Tens

Chickens and the Clever Fox

Three chickens and a fox.

Tikloo farmer has many chickens in her farm. One day a clever fox saw these naughty chickens playing around.


A woman is asking the fox if she ate her chickens, to which the fox replies that she is woman's friend, so how can she eat her chickens.

From that day, she started stealing and eating chickens every day.

Tikloo came to know about it.

She asked the fox.

Hey, do you eat may chickens?

No dear, I am your friend, how can I eat your chickens?


Tikloo thought of counting her chickens every morning and evening. But the chickens kept moving around here and there. She said – I will put 10 chickens in one basket and count them. And if I find any of them missing ……

In the morning, she counted her chickens.

There are five baskets chickens, with ten chickens in each basket. There are four chickens outside the baskets.

  • How many baskets of 10 chickens are there?
  • How many chickens are there  in  all? 50 + 4 = _____

In the evening, she counted the chickens again.

  • There are _____ baskets of 10 chickens.
  • There are _____ + 3 = _____ chickens in all.
  • 54 – _____ = _____ chickens have been eaten by the fox.

There are four baskets of chickens, with ten chicken in each basket. Three chickens are out of the basket.

How Many are These?

Bhanu collects sticks from the jungle. He sells them in the market.

There is a man holding two sticks in one hand and an axe in the other hand. There are seven bundles, with ten sticks in each bundle. Two groups of sticks, with ten in each group are lying untied on the floor.

He uses10 sticks to make 1 bundle.

3 bundles have _____ sticks.

  • Now, how many sticks in all are these?

    _____ sticks in all.

4 bundles would have _____ sticks.

Before doing these exercises, ask children to represent numbers by making bundles of 10 with the help of materials such as sticks or beads. Help them link these concrete objects to written symbols and oral names of the numbers.

There is a wedding in Malti's house. She is making flower garlands.

A woman is making garlands using flowers. Eight flowers are lying separately.

She uses 10 flowers to make a garland.

8 flowers

So there are _____ flowers in all.

How many flowers are these? _____ flowers in all.

  • How many garlands of 10 flowers each can you make using 21 flowers? Draw them in the space below.

There is a woman and a little girl standing near a cupboard. In the cupboard, there are six packets of pencils with ten pencils in each packet and four pencils are outside the packets.

Leela, can you see all these pencils? How many are these? If you make a good guess, all these will be yours!

Let us help Leela.

A girl has seven packets of bindis in total and each packet has ten bindis.

  • How many packets of 10 pencils are there?
  • How many pencils are outside the packets?
  • So, altogether there are _____ pencils.

Kanak likes collecting different kinds of bindis.

  • How many packets does she have?
  •  So how many bindis in all?

     Each packet has 3 + 4 + 3 bindis.

 Now you draw 10 bindis in a different way.

There is a girl and a blank space is given to draw bindis in different ways.

Discuss the strategy used by children for guessing. Encourage them to count in 10s. Also make children notice that 10 bindis can be arranged in different patterns. You may ask children to try different arrangements using 10 bindis which are visually easy to count.