Michaela picked some dandelions yesterday.

Well, I saw a neighbor’s yard with bright yellow dandelions and told Michaela that if she picked them for me that I would pay her a penny for each…(I thought that would help keep them from spreading!)

Michaela didn’t pick as many as she could have, but she did a great job.

I thought that it would help her understanding in counting by tens to a hundred if she counted all those dandelions. We put ten pages of scrap paper onto the dining room table and she started counting out her flowers–ten to a page. When she had flowers on all ten pages, we dumped them into my dishpan in the middle of the table. While she started counting again, I headed to get her a dollar for the 100 plucked flowers. I was feeling like this had been a good deal for both of us.

Michaela got lots of practice counting by tens to hundreds and even found out what ten hundreds is called. When she topped off at 1300 dandelions, I was convinced that I wouldn’t offer her a penny per flower ever again!

I saw the neighbor’s yard on my way to the post office this morning. It looked just like it did yesterday morning before Michaela had picked any flowers.

Laurie