Before and After Numbers Worksheet for Preschoolers
This worksheet builds number-sequencing skills for children ages 4-5 by asking them to identify which number comes immediately before and after a given number, along with counting and matching exercises. Understanding 'before' and 'after' requires children to hold a mental number line in their head and reason about relative position, a more abstract skill than simple counting or number recognition. This kind of sequencing practice is foundational for later addition and subtraction, where children need to move fluently forward and backward through numbers.
Part of the pack
Month 9: Holistic Preschool Play Learning | Ages Up to 4
This is page 18 of the pack. Ages 3-4 · PreschoolAges 3-4 · NurseryAges 3-4
Made for your child
Counting to 10, made for your child
A maths pack with your child's name in it: pictures that explain, practice at three levels, puzzles and story sums about them. Print a new set whenever they finish.
Make a maths packFree preview · free for members
Curriculum
- Number Sense > Number Sequencing
How to use this worksheet
Look at the example together first, pointing out how the number before is one less and the number after is one more than the given number. Go through each item, saying the given number aloud and asking your child to figure out what comes right before it and right after it, then write both numbers in the blanks. For the counting and matching sections, have your child count the objects shown aloud, one at a time, and match the total to the correct number. Review all the answers together at the end, counting up from each 'before' number to check it makes sense.
Materials needed
- Pencil
- Crayons
Extension activities
- 1Use a number line or number chart and have your child point to a number, then slide their finger to find what comes before and after.
- 2Play a quick oral game: say a number and have your child immediately say the number before and after it.
- 3Count a set of household objects together, then ask what number would come next if you added one more.
- 4Use building blocks or counters to physically represent a number, then add or remove one to show 'before' and 'after'.
- 5Practice with a deck of number cards, laying out three in a row and asking your child to find the missing middle number.
Written by
Hemsweta Jain · Teacher Cheena
MBA and Early Childhood Educator, teaching since 2014 · Founder of RaisoActive, Mumbai
Every RaisoActive worksheet is designed and checked by the founder before publishing.
Published · Last reviewed
More from Month 9: Holistic Preschool Play Learning | Ages Up to 4
Community Helpers Cut and Paste Worksheet for Preschoolers
Ages 3-5 · Preschool–Pre-KAges 3-5 · Nursery–ReceptionAges 3-5 · Nursery–LKGAges 3-5
This cut-and-paste worksheet focuses specifically on firefighters for children ages 3-5, teaching them to recognize firefighting equipment like a hose, helmet, or ladder and connect each item to a firefighter's job. Learning about a single community helper in depth, rather than several at once, lets young children build a richer, more detailed understanding of what that job actually involves. The cutting, gluing, and circling tasks also build the fine motor coordination needed for more complex craft and writing activities later.
Parent's Guide: Sentence Framing and Early Literacy Activities
Ages 3-5 · Preschool–Pre-KAges 3-5 · Nursery–ReceptionAges 3-5 · Nursery–LKGAges 3-5
This parent's guide equips families of children ages 3-5 with a toolkit of hands-on activities — sentence framing, letter games, number and money recognition, and before/after sequencing with blocks — that build early literacy and numeracy together rather than in isolation. Framing simple sentences specifically helps children move from single words to connected speech, a critical bridge toward writing their own sentences later.
Earlier and Later: Flower Bloom Sequencing Worksheet for Preschoolers
Ages 3-5 · Preschool–Pre-KAges 3-5 · Nursery–ReceptionAges 3-5 · Nursery–LKGAges 3-5
Sequencing events in order is an early scientific and narrative reasoning skill, and this worksheet uses the life cycle of a flower to give children ages 3-5 concrete practice with the concepts of 'earlier' and 'later.' By matching earlier-stage images to their later-stage counterparts, children start to understand cause and change over time, a concept that underlies both storytelling and basic science observation. Drawing the next stage of the flower's bloom afterward adds a predictive element, asking children to apply the pattern they've just observed.
Number Tracing and Counting Worksheet for Kids
Ages 4-6 · Pre-K–KindergartenAges 4-6 · Reception–Year 1Ages 4-6 · LKG–UKGAges 4-6
This worksheet layers three connected numeracy skills for children ages 4-6: tracing numerals to build correct number formation, writing numbers independently from memory, and counting objects to connect a written numeral to an actual quantity. Number formation practice at this age matters because children often develop habits — like starting a number from the wrong point — that are hard to unlearn later, so guided tracing helps establish correct strokes early. Pairing that with counting smiley faces ensures the numeral isn't just a shape being copied but a quantity being understood.
Seasons Matching Worksheet for Preschoolers
Ages 3-5 · Preschool–Pre-KAges 3-5 · Nursery–ReceptionAges 3-5 · Nursery–LKGAges 3-5
Understanding that different seasons bring different weather, clothing, and activities is an early science and life-skills concept for children ages 3-5, and this worksheet builds that understanding by having them match objects to the correct season and consider what they'd wear in each. Making these connections requires observation and categorization skills, since a child has to recall or reason through why a snowman belongs with winter or shorts belong with summer rather than simply memorizing a fixed answer. This kind of seasonal reasoning also lays groundwork for later science topics like weather patterns and the calendar year.
Transport Worksheet: Circle and Count the Transport Items!
Ages 3-5 · Preschool–Pre-KAges 3-5 · Nursery–ReceptionAges 3-5 · Nursery–LKGAges 3-5
This worksheet combines two skills for children ages 3-5: visually identifying which pictures represent transportation versus other objects, and then counting a separate group of transport items and recording the total as a number. Circling only the correct category first requires categorization and attention to detail, while the counting section that follows builds one-to-one correspondence with a real-world, kid-friendly theme that most children find naturally engaging. Vehicles are also a great vocabulary-building topic, since children often already know many transport names from daily life.
Tight and Loose Worksheet: Circle and Color!
Ages 3-5 · Preschool–Pre-KAges 3-5 · Nursery–ReceptionAges 3-5 · Nursery–LKGAges 3-5
Understanding opposite pairs like 'tight' and 'loose' helps children ages 3-5 build descriptive vocabulary and comparative thinking, skills that support both language development and early reasoning about physical properties. This worksheet asks children to look closely at pictured items — like shoelaces, screws, or clothing — and judge which state each one is in, which sharpens observation skills alongside vocabulary. Learning opposites like this also lays groundwork for later concepts such as measurement and comparison in math.
Letter Recognition Worksheet: Fill in the Beginning Letter!
Ages 3-5 · Preschool–Pre-KAges 3-5 · Nursery–ReceptionAges 3-5 · Nursery–LKGAges 3-5
This worksheet gives children ages 3-5 practice identifying the beginning sound of pictured words, writing the missing letter to complete each one, and then specifically finding words that start with the letter 'W'. Focusing on one target letter in the second half of the worksheet adds a layer of selective attention, asking children to recognize a specific letter among several options rather than just filling in blanks.
Related worksheets
Missing Numbers Worksheet: Before, Between, and After
Ages 4-6 · Pre-K–KindergartenAges 4-6 · Reception–Year 1Ages 4-6 · LKG–UKGAges 4-6
This worksheet asks children ages 4-6 to fill in missing numbers that come before, between, or after given numbers in a sequence, building a deeper understanding of number order than simple counting alone. Recognizing what number is missing from a sequence requires children to mentally hold the number line and reason about relative position, a skill that supports later addition and subtraction.
Penguin's Path: A Fun Sorting Worksheet for Kids!
Ages 4-6 · Pre-K–KindergartenAges 4-6 · Reception–Year 1Ages 4-6 · LKG–UKGAges 4-6
This maze worksheet has 4-6 year olds trace a path through numbers 11 to 40, building both number sequencing across a wider range and the fine motor control needed to draw a connected line dot to dot. Because the range spans several decades, your child gets real practice with the trickiest part of early counting — the transitions between decades (19 to 20, 29 to 30) — while the penguin's journey gives the task a clear, motivating goal.
Pizza Path: Numbers 51-60 Worksheet for Kids
Ages 4-5 · Pre-KAges 4-5 · ReceptionAges 4-5 · LKGAges 4-5
Connecting the dots from 51 to 60 in order pushes children ages 4-5 beyond the more familiar 1-20 range, helping them recognize two-digit numbers and understand that counting sequences continue predictably into higher decades. This dot-to-dot format turns number recognition into a rewarding visual payoff, since a hidden pizza picture only appears once every number is found and connected correctly. It's a motivating way to practice number order without it feeling like repetitive drilling.
Missing Numbers Train Worksheet: Numbers 1-20
Ages 4-6 · Pre-K–KindergartenAges 4-6 · Reception–Year 1Ages 4-6 · LKG–UKGAges 4-6
This worksheet helps children ages 4-6 practice number recognition and sequencing by filling in missing numbers on a train of cars that counts from 1 to 20, reinforcing that numbers follow a fixed, predictable order. Working with a range this large also builds the stamina and sustained counting skill needed before children move on to skip-counting and simple addition.
Number Sequence Worksheet: What Comes Before, After, and In Between!
Ages 4-5 · Pre-KAges 4-5 · ReceptionAges 4-5 · LKGAges 4-5
Identifying numbers that come before, after, or in between a given number builds flexible number sequencing skills for children ages 4-5, going beyond simple forward counting to strengthen their overall sense of number order.
Egg Sorting Worksheet: Count and Order the Chicks!
Ages 3-5 · Preschool–Pre-KAges 3-5 · Nursery–ReceptionAges 3-5 · Nursery–LKGAges 3-5
Cutting out and arranging numbered eggs in order builds number sequencing skills for children ages 3-5, requiring them to compare several numbers at once and place them correctly rather than just recognizing a single number in isolation. This hands-on ordering task also reinforces counting fluency, since children benefit from counting aloud as they check their arrangement.
Recite Numbers Worksheet: Connect the Dots and Practice Number Sequencing!
Ages 3-5 · Preschool–Pre-KAges 3-5 · Nursery–ReceptionAges 3-5 · Nursery–LKGAges 3-5
Children ages 3-5 practice number sequencing and recitation as they connect numbered dots in order to reveal a hidden picture, reinforcing both number recognition and the ability to count forward smoothly without skipping. Saying each number aloud while connecting it also builds the verbal counting fluency children need before they can count objects accurately.
Ascending Order Cut and Paste Worksheet for Preschoolers
Ages 4-6 · Pre-K–KindergartenAges 4-6 · Reception–Year 1Ages 4-6 · LKG–UKGAges 4-6
This worksheet teaches children ages 4-6 to arrange numbered animal pictures from smallest to largest, reinforcing the concept of ascending order as a foundational number-sequencing skill. Physically cutting and repositioning each numbered piece, rather than simply writing numbers in order, makes the abstract idea of 'smallest to largest' into something children can manipulate and see. This hands-on approach also builds patience and careful visual comparison.
Guides for this topic
Number Formation Rhymes 0–9 and How to Fix Reversals
Original number formation rhymes for 0–9, the correct stroke order for each digit, why 3, 5 and 7 get reversed most often, and multisensory fixes that work.
Christmas and Winter Activities That Combine Fun and Learning: Creating Magical Educational Experiences
Discover Christmas and winter activities that combine festive fun with real learning. Crafts, counting, literacy, and printable worksheets for ages 2 to 8 — perfect for home and school.
Age-Appropriate Halloween Learning Activities: Balancing Spooks and Skills for Young Learners
Discover fun, age-appropriate Halloween learning activities for young children. Spooky crafts, counting games, literacy ideas, and printable worksheets for ages 2 to 8.
Reviews
Every worksheet for ages 4–5, no watermark
Members download the full library of 1,000+ worksheets and every activity pack without watermarks or daily limits. One year costs ₹999 in India or $20 elsewhere.
See membership plansOr download any worksheet free with a watermark (5 a day).