Taco Sauce Math

Just had to share our 'Unschooling' math moment from the other day......Clay had gone to Taco Bell the night before on his way home from work & he grabbed a handful of those little sauce packets to bring home because the kids love it on their tacos! Anyway, Michael found them in the frige the next morning & was tickled to death. He dumped them all out on the table & began to sort them into piles...mild, hot, fire....(sorting/classifying going on here). Then he counted each pile...27 mild, 27 hot & 20 fire (comparison). I heard this & decided to seize the moment & run with it....I asked him if he could figure how many we had altogether....after all, that is what we've been working on...adding 3 numbers together. His first response was that he'd dump them all out again & count them ALL. I told him NO, that we could just write down 27+27+20 & figure out the total. Well, he looked at me & said we have 74..... I asked him HOW he figured that up so fast (I'm still over here counting on my fingers)....he says 3 20s is 60 & 2 7s is 14 & that makes 74! Not exactly how 'I' was figuring it (27+27+20) but anyway.... ;-) One of those cool math lessons that he didn't even realize he had just had. I love it!!