Why do we count with 10?

We use 10 because we have 10 fingers, and that’s something everyone can touch and count every day!

Imagine you're playing with your hands. You put up all your fingers, that’s 10! If you’re counting toys or cookies, it's easy to match each one to a finger. When you run out of fingers on one hand, you just use the other hand. That gives you 20, and so on.

If we only had 5 fingers, like some animals do, we might count in groups of 5, but that would make bigger numbers harder to say. On the flip side, if we had 20 fingers, like some people imagine, we could count up to 20 with just one hand! But our hands are perfect for 10, and that’s what most people use.

So, we count with 10 because it's right there, in the palm of your hand!