Counting by 5s Nickels

A nickel is a silver coin worth 5 cents. When you have nickels, you can count them by 5s: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25. Each nickel adds five more cents. Counting by 5s is a fast way to count money and many other things that come in groups of five.

Counting by 5s means adding 5 each time. Start at 5: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50. Every number ends in 0 or 5. A nickel is worth exactly 5 cents, so one nickel is 5, two nickels is 10, three nickels is 15, and so on. Twenty nickels equal one whole dollar.

Count your fingers! You have 5 on each hand. One hand is 5, two hands is 10. Tally marks are drawn in groups of 5 with four lines and a slash through them. If you see three tally groups you can count them as 5, 10, 15. Five nickels in your piggy bank equal 25 cents. Ten nickels equal 50 cents. Twenty nickels equal 100 cents, which is one dollar!

Counting by 5s is the first step toward multiplication. When you say 5, 10, 15, you are really saying one 5, two 5s, three 5s. You can skip count by 5s up to 100 in just 20 steps. That is much faster than counting by 1s which would take 100 steps. Grown-ups use this trick all the time when they count time (every 5 minutes on a clock) or when they count money.