Counting Bears
Dominura looked around the classroom. The girls were working on a task for the teacher. They had just been counting bears in a jar, and now had been given more bears to count on their own. A blank page rested in front of her, smiling bears looking back up at her.
"I want you to count all the red bears in front of you and then color that many bears on your paper." The teacher demonstrated the task on the board, and then began to circle around the tables, observing the girls.
Dominura began pulling all the red bears from her large pile and set them in a straight line. There was a loud crash next to her, and she turned to find that Aaeru had stacked the bears, and they had fallen into her pile. "Aaeru!" scolded Dominura. She wasn't fond of the girl, who sometimes acted like a baby in her mind.
Aaeru only giggled. "But it's funny!" She gathered the bears with her right hand, reaching across the table.
"No it's not," added Mamiina, scowling at the two of them across the table.
Dominura went back to setting up her bears. She counted the row of red ones she had, and found there were 9 red bears. She set to coloring on her paper, making sure she was careful to stay in the lines. Suddenly, her red crayon slid across the paper, and she glared at Aaeru, who'd moved her cast to keep a new stack of bears from falling.
Immediately, Dominura raised her hand. The teacher came over to the table. "Yes, Dominura?"
"Aaeru's making it hard to work. She keeps stacking bears and they fall onto my pile or she bumps my arm."
"Aaeru, is this true?"
"Not exactly," was the timid reply. "I didn't mean for them to fall."
The teacher looked around the room at the other tables, wondering who she could switch. "Yun, will you trade seats with Dominura for this activity?"
The switch was made and Dominura found herself sitting by Limone, who had long ago completed the first part of the activity with ease. Dominura worked to catch up, quickly and neatly coloring in the rest of the bears she had yet to finish. She looked up when she noticed Limone looking at her out of the corner of her eye. "What?" she asked.
"N-nothing," replied Limone, looking back down at her own paper.
"Please count your blue bears now and then color them in on your paper," stated the teacher, once again demonstrating on the board.
Each girl set to work, following the teacher's instructions. Dominura carefully counted all of her blue bears before beginning to color them in on her paper.
"You forgot one," called Limone softly, reaching over to Dominura's pile and pulling out one that was hidden under a group of green and yellow bears.
Dominura offered her a smile. "Thanks," she replied, coloring in another bear.
The activity continued, the teacher having each of the girls work on the yellow bears and finally the green bears. By the time Dominura was finished, she had a colorful page full of bears. "We have one more step before we're finished," reminded the teacher. "We need to count our bears again and write how many of each color we have."
Dominura began to count her bears, starting with the red bears. She counted 9 and began to make the number on her paper with her pencil. Then she counted her green bears and found there were 12. Next came the blue bears. There were 5 blue bears. She began to make the 5 on the paper, but found that it did not look like a 5 at all. It looked more like an S. Frustrated, she erased the 5 and tried again, getting a very similar result.
Limone watched her quietly, observing her actions. She rose from her seat and stood beside Dominura. "Like this," she said, placing her own finger on the table and tracing a 5.
Dominura watched her, and then copied her actions. She repeated drawing a 5 over and over before picking up her pencil and trying again. This time, her 5 looked much more recognizable. "Thank you," she replied.
"No problem." Limone returned to her seat and sat quietly, hands in her lap. Dominura now noticed that she didn't talk to her tablemates and that she followed the teacher's directions perfectly. She didn't have much more time to consider this because the teacher began the cleanup process, and Dominura helped Morinas and Yun gather the group of counting bears into the large bucket while Limone gathered their group papers into a pile.
