Early MathTally marks, up to 15
Name: Date:
Count the tally marks. Write how many.
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Reading tally marks worksheets
A tally is the first written mathematics that is not a numeral, and it carries one idea counting sheets cannot: five is a unit. These free printable worksheets show a row of marks — four uprights and a stroke across them — and ask how many.
If they get stuck
Reading tally marks
The answer key prints on a separate page.
What's on this sheet
Because the marks are gated in fives, seventeen is read as "five, ten, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen" rather than as seventeen separate acts of counting. That is skip counting arriving through the back door, and it is the same bundling idea that base-ten blocks teach one step later.
Why this sheet works
The rows are drawn with the same measured geometry as the tally tables on our chart sheets, so a gate always reads as a strike across four and never as a fifth upright leaning over.