When there are no or very few sheep left in the playing area, call a halt to the action and count up the score, i.e., the number of sheep in each fold. The team with the most sheep in its fold wins the round. If time allows, you can rescatter the sheep and repeat the game.

Used by over 70,000 teachers & 1 million students at home and school. Studyladder is an online english literacy & mathematics learning tool. Kids activity games, worksheets and lesson plans for Primary and Junior High School students in United States. Begin to count the sheep. Once you have a herd of sheep in the field, start to count each one, beginning from “1”. You may want to picture the sheep jumping over the fence in the field and count each sheep as it jumps, or you may simply count the sheep at random. That is because there is a tendency to assume that long tenure means competence and good performance. Moreover, the very worst bosses quickly learn how to “play the game” – operating under management’s radar screen, and building a system of allies and cronies to support and spread their toxic behavior. Find the Good Leaders.

Counting sheep is a mental exercise used in some Western cultures as a means of putting oneself to sleep.

In most depictions of the activity, the practitioner envisions an endless series of identical white sheep jumping over a fence, while counting them as they do so. The idea, presumably, is to induce boredom while occupying the mind with something simple, repetitive, and rhythmic, all of which are known to help humans sleep.

Although the practice is largely a stereotype, and rarely used as a solution for insomnia, it has been so commonly referenced by cartoons, comic strips, and other mass media, that it has become deeply engrained into popular culture's notion of sleep. The term 'counting sheep' has entered the English language as an idiomatic term for insomnia. Sheep themselves have become associated with sleep, or lack thereof.

The effectiveness of the method may depend upon the mental power required. An experiment conducted by researchers at Oxford University, though not involving livestock as the object of visualization, found that subjects who imagined 'a beach or a waterfall' were forced to expend more mental energy, and fell asleep faster, than those asked to 'simply distract from thoughts, worries and concerns.' ^[1] Sleep could be achieved by any number of complex activities that expend mental energy.

An early reference to counting sheep as a means of attaining sleep can be found in Illustrations of Political Economy by Harriet Martineau, from 1832:

'It was a sight of monotony to behold one sheep after another follow the adventurous one, each in turn placing its fore-feet on the breach in the fence, bringing up its hind legs after it, looking around for an instant from the summit, and then making the plunge into the dry ditch, tufted with locks of wool. The process might have been more composing if the field might have been another man's property, or if the flock had been making its way out instead of in; but the recollection of the scene of transit served to send the landowner to sleep more than once, when occurring at the end of the train of anxious thoughts which had kept him awake.' (p. 355–356)

An even earlier reference can be found in 'Don Quixote' by Miguel de Cervantes, from 1605 (the exception being Cervantes substituting 'goats' for 'sheep'):

'Let your worship keep count of the goats the fisherman is taking across, for if one escapes the memory there will be an end of the story, and it will be impossible to tell another word of it.'

Cervantes probably adapted the story of counting goats from a story of counting sheep in the early twelfth-century Spanish work Disciplina Clericalis. The section The King and his Story-teller (section 12) uses the idea of counting sheep humorously.^[2] Disciplina Clericalis draws mainly on literary sources from the Islamic world. Counting sheep was probably a widely recognized practice in the Islamic world before the early twelfth century.

Counting Sheepobey Games Free

Several late 19th-century writers mention the use of counting sheep in order to aid sleep;^[3][4][5] the period of the 1860s–70s appears to be when it became a commonplace term, for example in Sabine Baring-Gould's Through flood and flame (1868): 'She turned her face to the wall with a weary sigh, and endeavoured, by counting sheep going through a hedge-gap, to trick sleep into closing her eyelids.'^[6] Macfarlane, Alexander William wrote about the technique in Insomnia and Its Therapeutics (1891).^[7]

In popular culture[edit]

Serta, an American mattress manufacturer, uses animated sheep characters in its 'Counting Sheep' advertising campaign, which it launched in 2000. The advertisements and characters were created by Aardman Animations.

In Goodnight Mr. Bean, the thirteenth episode of the Mr. Bean television series, Mr. Bean has difficulty falling asleep. He tries sleeping in different positions (along with sleeping with his face on pillow until he can't breathe), then watches a chess game on TV. As he nearly falls asleep, he becomes startled when the television channel cuts to a Bodyform advertisement via a star swipe featuring loud rock music. Finally, he takes out a picture of a flock of sheep and begins counting them, first with his finger and then, after losing count a few times, with the assistance of a calculator. When he sees the number of sheep (albeit inaccurate) on the calculator display, he finally falls asleep. After the closing credits, he rolls out of bed and falls onto the floor, ending the episode.

In Shaun the Sheep Championsheeps, a 2012 series of sports-themed animated shorts, the 'counting sheep' cliché is referenced in the episode entitled 'Steeplechase'. In the short, Shaun and his fellow sheep participate in the steeplechase event. Bitzer the dog, who is the referee, and the other sheep and farm animals, who are spectators, all fall asleep watching Shaun and the other sheep running around the track and jumping over the hurdles.^[8]

The title of Philip K. Dick's science fiction novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, references this term.

See also[edit]

• Count Your Sheep, an online comic inspired by counting sheep

References[edit]

1. ^Harvey, Allison G., and Suzanna Payne. 2002. “The management of unwanted pre-sleep thoughts in insomnia: distraction with imagery versus general distraction.” Behaviour Research and Therapy. 40 (3): 267-277.
2. ^'ancient origin of counting sheep to fall asleep – purple motes'.
3. ^Clippinger, John Albert (December 19, 1876). 'The Pedagogue of Widow's Gulch: Or, The Adventures of a Pioneer School Teacher in a Secluded Vale in California, where Married Men Could Not Live, and where Widows Did Not Die'. R. Young – via Google Books.
4. ^Bowra, Harriette (December 19, 1872). 'Una, Or, The Early Marriage: A Domestic Tale'. Hodder and Stoughton – via Google Books.
5. ^'The Monthly Packet of Evening Readings for Members of the English Church'. John and Charles Mozley. December 19, 1877 – via Google Books.
6. ^Gould, Sabine Baring (December 19, 1868). 'Through flood and flame [by S.B. Gould]' – via Google Books.
7. ^Macfarlane, Alexander William (December 19, 1891). 'Insomnia and Its Therapeutics'. William Wood – via Google Books.
8. ^'Episodes from Shaun the Sheep Championsheeps – broadcast in 2012'. BBC. Retrieved 12 September 2012.

• P. Martin (2005), Counting sheep: the science and pleasures of sleep and dreams, St. Martin's Griffin

STEP 2: If prompted, click Allow:

Count the Sheep

Description: Disguised as sheep by covering themselves with sheepskin, the cunning wolves are hosting a masquerade with the aim to attack the innocent sheep. Can you bring an end to their fantasy with your eagle eyes? Your goal in this game is to count the correct number of sheep without being fooled by the disguised wolves. A number of sheep will appear at the start of each level, and you will have a few seconds to observe them. After that you need to report the exact number of sheep on the grassland, and you can click the corresponding number on the screen or use your keyboard to give your answer. Click the Submit button to check the result, and you can proceed to the next level if your answer is correct. As you advance in the game, the number of sheep will increase, and more disguised wolves will join the game. Drive the evil away and protect your sheep from harm!

Instructions:

Counting Sheepobey Games Game

Category: Math Games

Note: This game requires Adobe Flash Player. If game does not load, try installing the newest Flash Player. This game takes a few seconds to load.

Counting Sheepobey Games To Play

Drag the hands of the clock to show the correct time.