What are tally marks?

Tally marks are simple lines people use to count things, just like you might count your toys or cookies.

Imagine you have a bag of marbles, and every time you take one out, you draw a short line on a piece of paper. That’s a tally mark! If you make four lines in a row, it looks like this: | | | |. Then, for the fifth marble, you draw a diagonal line across the first four, like this: |||| /. It's easier to see how many marbles you have when your marks are grouped like that.

Each time you count something new, you make one tally mark. When you get to five, you cross them off with a diagonal line. This helps you keep track of bigger numbers without getting confused, just like how you might group your toys into piles so you know how many you have at a glance.

Tally marks are super useful when you're counting things that come one by one, like steps, animals, or even the number of times you jump!