Lessons · Counting
A hundred acorns
Gather a heap, then discover that the only way to count a heap is to stop treating it as one.
When
September to November
Outside
About 45 minutes
What it teaches
Grouping as a counting strategy — the first real step towards place value.
What is going on
Oaks across a whole county drop an enormous crop in the same autumn and almost nothing for the two or three years between. It is not weather — it is coordinated, and the effect is to starve the squirrel and jay populations down in the lean years so that when the big crop comes it outruns everything with a mouth. A child filling a bucket this year and half a hatful in two years' time is watching a strategy. The counting problem is the one every numeral system on earth solved the same way: somewhere past twenty you stop counting things and start counting groups of things, and the child has to hit that wall themselves before the trick means anything.
What to look for
- Whether this is a heavy year or a thin one — ask anyone who feeds birds, they will know
- Small round holes in some of them: a weevil laid an egg in the green acorn and the grub chewed its way out
- Which ones the squirrels left behind. White oak acorns sprout the same autumn, so squirrels eat those first and bury the red oak ones that keep
- Caps still on, or caps off. The cap is not part of the nut and comes away clean when it is ripe
First, outside
What to do
What to take
- A bucket or a hat
- An egg carton, if you have one
- A stick to draw with
- 1
Find a tree dropping acorns, or beech nuts, or maple keys — anything that falls in hundreds. Fill the bucket together. Nobody counts yet.
- 2
Tip the heap out on a flat rock or a path and look at it. Ask how many. Let the guesses be wild; write them in the dirt with the stick.
- 3
Now count it properly — and the moment it goes wrong, which it will at about seventeen, stop and ask what would make it easier.
- 4
Make piles of ten. An egg carton does this for you: one in each hole, and a full carton is a dozen, which is its own conversation.
- 5
Count the piles by tens, then add the leftovers. Compare with the guesses in the dirt.
Out loud
What to say to each of them
All three at once, off the same bucket of acorns. Read down the column that matches the child in front of you.
2
Point and name
- “Put one acorn in the bucket. One. Now another one — two.”
- “Hand me two acorns. Not three. Two.”
- “Which pile is big? Which is little? Point at the big one.”
Subitising — seeing that a group is two without counting it — and the idea that a number word belongs to a thing you are touching.
4
Count and compare
- “Count them into my hand, one at a time. One number for each acorn — don't say two numbers for the same one.”
- “How many was that? The last number you said is how many there were.”
- “Make me a pile of ten. Now another ten. How many is two tens?”
One-to-one correspondence: one number word per object, the last word you said is how many there were. Then more, fewer, and the same.
6
Tally and figure
- “Count them in tens. Ten, twenty, thirty — and what do we do with the seven left over?”
- “Your brother guessed forty and there are sixty-three. How far out was he?”
- “If every pile is ten, how many piles would a hundred take?”
Grouping as a way of counting past what fingers hold, and subtraction as the distance between two numbers rather than a taking-away.
When it is not working
What going wrong looks like
Most of what looks like failing is a child standing at a known place on a known ladder. Knowing which place changes what you do next, and it is usually not more practice.
About 2
Tips the bucket out and wanders off. That is not the lesson failing — gathering IS the lesson at two, and the counting belongs to somebody else in the family. Let them fill and tip as many times as they like.
About 4
Counts to seventeen twice and gets a different number both times. Nearly always a tracking problem rather than a counting one: they have no way to keep the counted separate from the uncounted. Show them moving each acorn from one heap to another as they say the number, and it usually fixes inside one session.
About 6
Builds the tens correctly and then counts the piles one, two, three. They have the grouping without the point of it yet. Count the piles aloud with them a few times — ten, twenty, thirty — and let them hear where it goes.
How you know it landed
They reach for the egg carton or start making piles without being told to. The moment grouping becomes their idea rather than yours is the whole lesson.
Rungs of the ladder this builds
Then, five minutes on screen
The same idea, drilled
The same counting, in groups of five on screen, so the grouping habit has somewhere to go on a rainy day.
Why this order
The walk first, the game after. Reversed, the walk becomes the price of the game, and a child who has learned that outside is what you do before the screen has learned the wrong thing very efficiently.
If they want more
Weigh ten acorns, then work out what a hundred would weigh without counting them. Then check.
When you have done it
Ticking it keeps it off the next season plan, and nothing else.
We look, we count and we put it back. Nothing goes in a mouth — not a berry, not a mushroom, not a leaf. That is the whole rule, and it is the same rule every time.
More counting
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