Wriggle
successor — adding one makes the next number; taking one makes the number before
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Wriggle was a caterpillar made of little round segments, all in a row. When Wriggle ate a leaf, something wonderful happened: a brand-new segment popped on at the end. One more bite, one more segment. Wriggle loved counting the new number.
"Three segments," Wriggle said one morning, wiggling each one. Then — munch! — a leaf, and pop, a new segment. "Now four!" Adding one had made the very next number. Three, then one more, then four. It always worked that way.
Sometimes a segment got tired and tucked itself away for a nap. Then Wriggle had one less. "Four... take one away... three." One more grew the number up. One less shrank it down. Wriggle could go either way, one little step at a time.
Wriggle's friends played the what-comes-next game. "You have five. What's one more?" "Six!" "You have six. What's one more?" "Seven!" Each answer was just the number, plus one. Once you knew the trick, you always knew what came next.
By nightfall Wriggle had munched all day and grown longer than ever. Wriggle counted every segment, slow and happy, right up to the newest one at the tip. Just this morning there had been fewer — and now, one more at a time, there were so many.
Wriggle curled up, warm and long and proud. Tomorrow there would be one more still. And Wriggle already knew exactly what number that would be.
The TallyTots ensemble
Wriggle is part of TallyTots's distributed-narrative cast. Each character embodies a different curricular primitive; together they teach the full subject.
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Ribbet
Mental number line / magnitude (hero) — a frog who hops the linear 1→10 lily-pad path; farther along IS more (the Ramani–Siegler core)
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Dottie
Subitizing — a ladybug whose back-spots you know at a glance, without counting; instant recognition IS subitizing
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Clutch
Counting / cardinality — a hen who touches each egg once as she counts; the last number IS how many in all
