She wrote "7" on the white board and asked the class to think of different ways of showing or writing seven.
Ben fetched the dominoes and found these ones:
Hanna used two dice to make seven which looked much the same as Ben's.
Annie and Tessa used the Cuisenaire rods and made seven in four different ways.
William made seven with linking cubes and Thea put seven pegs on a pegboard.
Nina drew a ladybird with seven spots.
Steven showed seven fingers and Alice put the play-clock to say "7 o'clock".
Tom's teacher then chose another odd number for the class to make.
Ben said, "There's only one domino this time."
"And only one way with the two dice," added Hanna "unless you make it two ways with the different colours, red and blue being different from blue and red."
"There isn't a rod that long!" grumbled Annie.
"But there's five ways with two rods," Tessa added.
William and Thea had no trouble making the new number with the linking cubes and pegs. "I don't think ladybirds come with that number of spots," mused Nina, "but I could draw one. Just extra spots on both sides."
"I haven't got enough fingers," grumbled Steven, "can I use one from someone else?"
"But I can still make the clock say the right time," said Alice, "But I couldn't have done if the number was much larger."
Tom jumped up and down, "It's my brother's birthday!" he called out, "And that's how old he is today!"
How old was Tom's brother?