The Old Sweet Shop – Count the Sweets

Welcome to The Old Sweet Shop, a fun and engaging maths activity designed to help little learners build confidence with counting and number recognition from 1–10!
Children will explore a colourful sweet shop scene and count the different sweets in each tray before recording their answers. The activity provides lots of opportunities for repetition and good practice within the numbers 1–10, making it ideal for early learners who are developing their counting skills.
Two Options Included
Choose the version that works best for your learners:
Colour Version – bright, engaging and ready to print and use.
Colouring Picture Version – children can colour the sweet shop and sweets as they complete the counting activity, adding an extra fun and creative element.
Plenty of Room for Extension!
The activity can easily be extended beyond simple counting. Use the sweet-shop theme to practice:
• More and fewer
• Comparing quantities
• Number writing
• Number recognition
• One-to-one counting
• Simple addition and subtraction
• Number bonds
• Ordering numbers
• Creating your own sweet-shop word problems
• Drawing or adding more sweets
• Counting in 2s, 5s or 10s for more advanced learners
A sweet way to practice early maths skills while giving children plenty of opportunities to count, write, colour and explore!
Credits & Copyright
© 2026 Sonyja Murphy. All rights reserved.
This educational resource was created by Sonyja Murphy.
Illustrations in this resource were created with the assistance of AI (ChatGPT by OpenAI) and have been edited and arranged as part of this original educational work.