This is How You Count Eggs

Aparna Athreya

Kavya was six years old.
She loved to chase birds and feed cows on the farm.
“Good morning!” she shouted one Sunday morning.

“Kavya, come here!” called out her grandma.
“Could you help Raghu collect
and count the eggs, please?”
FRRRRR!

Raghu began to count the eggs. “One, two, three...fourteen...
Oi, Seena, drop my slipper now!”

He started to count again. “Twelve, thirteen...aiyo, had I counted till thirteen? Or twelve?”
he wondered aloud. Raghu took out all the eggs from his basket and started counting again.
“One, two...sixteen, Puneet, DON’T touch my cycle!

“Fifteen, sixteen...oh no, where was I? I’ll just collect the eggs now.
We can count them later,” he told Kavya.
“I learnt an easy way to count in school,” said Kavya. “All you have to do is count from one to ten. Counting up to ten is easier than counting bigger numbers, isn’t it?”
“Ha! I can count up to crores!” said Raghu.

“But counting up to ten is so easy! Add ten eggs to a basket. Take another basket and add ten
eggs to this too. Keep doing this till you have collected the last egg. In the end, you will have
many baskets with ten eggs each.”
Raghu made a face at Kavya.

Raghu counted ten eggs and put them in one basket. Then he picked up the second basket and collected ten eggs in it.
Soon, he said, “I’ve collected all the eggs! Can YOU tell me how many we have?”

“How many baskets of eggs do you have?” asked Kavya.
“Five baskets with ten eggs each,” said Raghu.
“Fifty eggs!” shouted Kavya.

“How did you count so fast?” asked their grandma.
“Ajji, there are ten eggs in one basket. We have five baskets. So, that makes it five groups of ten eggs. That is ten plus ten plus ten plus ten plus ten. Fifty eggs,” said Kavya.
Kavya and Raghu went to the market with Ajji. They had fun selling the eggs.

They helped Ajji count the money when they came back home.
And for dinner, they had rice and spicy egg sambar.

Ones and Tens
A TEN is a group of ten ONES
One egg, one chicken, one basket

11 = One TEN + one ONE
23 = Two TENS + three ONES
12 = One TEN + two ONES