Counting by 10s using what they love

My boy is UBER OBSESSED with Cars (cars 1, not cars 2- which makes it really hard to find the toys he wants to play with, since its only cars 2 out in the stores- but I digress...).  I have noticed he is pretty interested in counting, and is pretty good with numbers, especially if they are on cars (there is no doubt he will recognize "95" every time it is shown to him, b/c it is Lightening McQueen's number).  His ability to recognize numbers that he identifies with toys got me to thinking about playing number games with his "race cars".  For a girl, this game could be done with cars as well, or with something they love, like barbies, even (see below for details).
I decided to work on counting by 10's to 100.  I asked him to pick out 10 of his favorite cars.  While he was doing that, I found small stickers (actually small price tags for a garage sale) and numbered each sticker 10-100 by 10s.  Then I took post it notes and did the same.  I made a circle out of the post its and told him to put his cars inside the circle where they would be on a "track".

 I put a sticker on each car.  I told him to take one car at a time, read the number out loud on the car, and drive it to its matching "pit stop" to get a tire change.

He loved it and we did this a few more times.  Then to mix it up, we put the numbers in a line and they would race to their corresponding number.  

 (I know... he's not in his pajamas... it took lots of caffeine this morning to get me going...)

Then I mixed them up and told him to "find the number 10" and so on, and place them in order in a line.

Then the cars each took a turn to race down the line from 10-100 and he said the number aloud as he passed it. 

He really had fun and continued playing with his numbered cars and their "pit crews" all day.
(For a girl, this could be done by numbering barbies, and having them find their house that matches their number).
Have fun racing!!!
- Jenny