How can we ask the question "How many?" in an authentic context? There are tons of times during the day that children count how many, without the teacher needing to ask, "How many?" One of the 'not so authentic' times I use the question is at the beginning of the day, during our whole class meeting, when the leader points to the words and we read together "Today is Monday" and then "How many...are there?" It was gumballs (previously the chart was a gumball machine, before I went for the plain blue). I found some ducks with velcro on the back of them and it became "How many duck are there?". We say it with some rhythm which worked better when it was gumball. In the picture you'll see that someone has matched the yellow ducks onto the yellow gumballs. As a class, we talked about there being 5 ducks and 2 hens. There are also 3 more red gumballs. From focusing on this the children may see the different ways to make 1