Sander's Reflexions

My daughter had carried the oranges on our way home from the supermarket. She counted them. ‘Daddy we have twelve oranges.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Yes daddy, but when we left the supermarket we had twenty oranges,’ she was joking. ‘Oops, how many have we lost?’ I was wondering if she could make that calculation. I continued unpacking the other things. She was staring out of the window. Suddenly she said ‘Eight!’ ‘Eight what?’ ‘We lost eight oranges.’ ‘Very good!’ She made the calculation. Now I was wondering again. How could she have done it? I never explained her how to do calculations with numbers above ten. She had been staring out of the window. She didn’t use beads or anything else. I asked her to explain how she did it. ‘I just count the numbers, daddy.’ ‘Count the numbers?’ ‘Yes, 13 - 1, 14 - 2, 15 - 3, 16 - 4, 17 - 5, 18 - 6, 19 - 7, 20 - 8. So we lost eight oranges.’