How to Make a Waldorf Skip Counting Board

August 18, 2015 // 20 Comments

Waldorf skip counting boards are a great way to help children visualize number patterns and introduce geometry concepts.

When making our board, it was a little more complicated to space the pegs out on the board than I had been lead to believe, so I ended up using a protractor and compass. You can just eyeball where to put the pegs if you are good at these things, as the boards don’t

need to be 100% accurate.

How to Make a Waldorf Skip Counting Board – Supplies:

Round piece of wood (it doesn’t need to have a hole in the center of it, that was just all I could find)

Wood pegs Glue Yarn Number stickers (optional) Protractor (optional) Compass (optional) Drill

Directions:

First, you need to mark ten points that are equally spaced around your circular piece of wood. To do this, use the protractor to divide your circle into ten segments, each 36° measured from your center point.

Use your compass to draw an inner circle that intersects all the segment lines, approximately 1/2″-1″ from the outer edge of your circle.

Where your inner circle and your segment lines intersect is where the pegs will go. Drill holes that are big enough for your pegs to fit in, but are still a tight squeeze, at these points.

Put glue in the peg holes and gently hammer the pegs about 1/4″ into the holes. Allow to dry.

Use stickers or a marker to label your pegs 0-9.

Tie your piece of yarn to the number 0.

When your child wants to practice counting, have him wrap the yarn around each peg as he counts (i.e. 3, 6, 9…) After counting to 9, the zero becomes 10, then the 1 becomes 11, the 2 becomes 12, and so on. After counting to 19, the zero becomes 20, then the 1 becomes 21, the 2 becomes 22, and so on. So if your child is counting by 3’s, as we did in the above photo, have him wrap around the 3, 6, 9, 2 (for 12), 5 (for 15), 8 (for 18), 1 (for 21), 4 (for 24), 7 (for 27), and 0 (for 30). He could then do 3 (for 33), 6, (for 36), 9 (for 39)… if he wants, but the yarn pattern will simply repeat.

In the photo above, we added a second piece of yarn and counted by 4’s with the purple piece of yarn, leaving the blue 3’s on the board also so we could compare 3’s and 4’s. So the 4’s went 4, 8, 2 (for 12), 6 (for 16), and 0 (for 20).