Counting Crocodiles

We read the book Counting Crocodiles by Judy Sierra. In the book, a monkey is pretending to count some crocodiles. The book never tells you how many crocodiles are in the water, so I asked Alexandra to figure it out. (Marilyn Burns has children do this with several different books.)

Alexandra wrote the numbers 1 through 10 at the top of the page. (The monkey 1st sees 1 crocodile doing something, then 2 doing something else, etc. up to 10 crocodiles). She then added the 1 and the 2. Then added the 3 and the 4. And added those two totals together. I had to help her twice - once because she skipped a number at the top (from her list of 1-10) and once because she added incorrectly. I was still very proud of her for coming up with the correct answer. It was quite a bit of work! Then, she decided to make a "55 crocodiles" ribbon out of her answer. Way to go Alexandra! You do deserve a ribbon!