A Big Number

This month in the children's department we are doing a Valentine's Day passive program.  We have a big jar of conversation hears on display, and we've challenged everyone to guess how many are in the jar.  It's all quite charming, and that big jar of candy has been a real attention-grabber.

Today a group of our regulars (two kids, age 5, and their nanny) came in and noticed the jar.  The nanny tried to get her kids to take a guess.  This activity is naturally a bit of a challenging for younger kids who do not yet possess refined estimation skills.  The nanny knew this, and really just tried to get the kids to guess a really big number.  The first child's guess?  One million.

The conversation with the second child is what really cracked me up:

"How many hearts do you think are in the jar?  Think of a really big number."

"Infinity!"

This lead to a brief, but very nice conversation about how infinity is never ending and there was definitely not a never-ending number of conversation hearts in the jar.  The kids seemed to accept this restriction on their guesses and the conversation continued.

"So let's guess again.  Think of a really big number that isn't infinity."

"Ten!"

From one extreme to the other.  Well done, kid.