9 Comments

For sure with the fingers. It's also good instead of talking - table for five 🖐️ How about estimation games where you guess how many candies are in the jar? My daughter just won a Lego bonzai tree for coming closest to the number of peppermints in a goldfish bowl

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I love trying to estimate things with limited info! It's kind of like finding out you have a superpower, only everyone with an imagination has it. Still, if you can get at least within an order of magnitude on some things, that's really valuable!

You are spot-on with communicating a number with your hands. They go both ways.

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There was actually a tie in my daughter's case. Someone actually guessed exactly the same as her or - as she pointed out - was off by the same amount. Kids love this game. JFran does it all the time with candy and they are super motivated because if you win, well candy

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Are you familiar with "the wisdom of the crowd" and how that idea came to prominence? There was a contest to guess the weight of an ox or something, and the crowd collectively came the closest.

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That sounds cool; I'll ask JFran if she gets class discussion going on guesses. Yknow another trick for this is patterns and sizes and maybe weight too. Like poker chips. Dealer/players can count by tens by feel or size

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Excellent point, and maybe this circles back to the idea of using your hands to count (or convey info) in other ways. Hands are so great.

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I actually have a really clever hack when I need to count large numbers of something. I simply count some common characteristic between those things and then do a bit of quick math.

Say I'm trying to figure out how many cows there are. I just count their legs first, then divide that number but four. Easy!

Feel free to use my system from now on.

Also, Merry Christmas!

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Life is but a circle, and making things much more complex can only possibly result in making them more simple in the end. I'd say "bah, humbug", but I legitimately hope you and your family have a very nice, comfy couple of days!

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The harder you make it, the simpler it is. It's pure logic.

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