Week 45: Eggs

First, I must say thank you to Kent Haines and Christopher Danielson for posting prompts like these on Twitter recently. This week's newsletter has been translated into Spanish by Ed Campos, Jr. Make sure you check it out and tell him thank you on Twitter. 

Quick! Look at the image above and tell me how many eggs you see in the crate!
This is not only a fun prompt to try at home, it's also a great insight into how you group objects to count them more efficiently. Did you count the first long row, the second row with the individual egg on one side and the pair on the other, then move the third row and finish it off? Did you start with the fact that there egg crates hold 12 eggs, then subtract out the missing ones? Did you approach it differently? More importantly, how did your child approach it and did that differ from yours?

How about this one? Was it easier to count these? More difficult? Our brains work in mysterious and interesting ways. For me, I'm taking the group of four, group of two, and group of four, then combining them all. Do you see it?

I love bringing my kids to the counter and challenging them with these quick prompts, none of which take a lot of creativity and offer a lot of opportunity for thoughtful responses. 

That is, until you go and start cracking eggs:

How many eggs do you see? What qualifies? How did you count?