Noura dropped into her chair just as a bright number card flipped over. Across the board, Arabic numbers 1 to 20 stretched in a happy parade.
She pointed to the shelf. “1 drum, 2 blocks, 3 cars,” Noura counted, one by one.
On her worksheet, Noura traced the dotted numbers. Then she looked up and counted more: 4 crayons, 5 beads, 6 little cups.
Her pencil scratched along the page. The numbers looked less wiggly now, and Noura smiled.
Then one number came out backward—plink, plink, plink! A cup of counting bears tipped over. Noura blinked, then laughed and counted the bears from 7 all the way to 20 as she lined them up again.
At last, Noura wrote the final number by herself. She lifted her worksheet high, grinned at 1 to 20 across the page, and set it proudly on the math table.
