Last year’s Christmas
Joey Johnson will soon be five. He has fond memories of the last Christmas. Grandpa and grandma Johnson had invited the whole family for Christmas. The family included Joey, his parents, two uncles and their families. He really loved playing together with his cousins Linda, Will and Heather. They had lots of fun. Grandma had cooked a huge turkey with really nice dressing. She had also baked a lot of cookies. His dad had bought chocolates for everyone. There were a lot of toys under the tree on the Christmas morning. Yes, these were fond memories.
Corona
Joey is a happy boy despite what happened this year. Because of the covid-19 or corona virus spread, he cannot meet most of his friends. Sure, they chat online but it is not the same thing. His school is closed and even the Santa Clause parade was cancelled. There will be a more strict lockdown over Christmas.
Joey gets fun where he can get it. He has even learned new words like curb-side delivery and virtual meetings. He is very happy today. They just got a Christmas tree delivered. The farm left the tree outside and his dad brought it to the living room.
Decorating the Christmas tree
Joey: Dad, when are we going to decorate the tree ?
Dad: Today. We bought a lot of decorations. How many ? Why don’t we do the decorate the tree and you keep counting. Tell me, when we are done.
Joey: Okay dad, can I start with the red balls ? They look nice and we have six of them.
Joey, wrote down 6 on a piece of paper, and together with dad, they hung them on the tree.
Dad: What do you want to use next ? We have blue ornaments of different shapes.
They hung them and then Joey counted on his fingers. They had 6 red balls and then 6 more. He counted 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12. That meant that they had 12 balls in all.
Joey: Can I put the stars now ?
Dad: Yes, we have 3 stars. After 12 comes 13, then 14 and 15. So we have 15 ornaments on so far.
Should we do the three long bulbs next?
Joey: Yes dad. He counted on his fingers 16, 17, 18. That will make it 18. We also have 6 more blue balls with grooves.
Dad: Yes, put them on the tree.
Joey put the 6 balls and then counted on his fingers and said, dad 18 + 6 is 24.
Dad then brought the set of cloth hangings
Joey: Wow, we have four Santa hangings. After 24 come 25, 26, 27 and 28.
That makes 28 ornaments in all on the tree.
He put them on until dad gave him two girl dolls.
Joey: That is 28 + 2 which is 30.
Dad: Here are two elves to make it 30 +2 or 32 ornaments.
Joey saw the two trees, put them on and said we have a total of 34 ornaments, dad.
Joey was happy that he had decorated the Christmas tree, Then he had his food and went to bed. He knew that Santa was not going to be able to come to the house. This was confirmed in the morning when there was only one present under the tree. This was the present that his mom had bought for him.
Virtual Meetings
Joey and his parents met the grandparents online. Joey also had virtual meetings with his uncles, aunts and cousins. All in all, the celebrations went as good as they could under the lockdown.
Suddenly, a delivery truck pulled over and left a few boxes on their porch. Dad brought them in and said: Joey, looks like these are for you.
Joey was thrilled. He ripped open the boxes. All the boxes had toys for him. There were a set of cars, a delivery truck, a new hat and one more toy that he loved most. It was a video game.
Challenge
Christmas is on December 25. Count six more days. What day do you get ? What comes after this day.
Supplementary
Pella is s small town in Iowa, USA. About ten thousand people live in it. Every day there would be new people who caught the corona virus. In the week leading to Christmas 2020, the number of new cases per day was as shown in the Table. You complete the last column of the Table.
| Date in December 2020 | Number of new cases on this date | Number of new cases since December 19 |
| 19 | 4 | 4 |
| 20 | 32 | 4 + 32 = 36 |
| 21 | 24 | 36 + 24 = 60 |
| 22 | 22 | 60 + 22 = |
| 23 | 28 | |
| 24 | 14 | |
| 25 | 17 |
Math Stories For You 