Layla is doing really well on her counting. She can get up to 12 or 13, and really she can do more but we usually are helping her at that point. We say it with her but kind of let her say the number a little ahead of what we say if that makes sense, and she gets up to about 20 that way. Sometimes she’ll get off to a funny start though, starting from 3 and counting down. Oftentimes its: 3-2-1-3-2-1… if we can get her out of the 3-2-1 cycle and/or start her off with 1 then she is off!
3-2-1 August 13, 2012
Counting October 18, 2010
Hayden’s newest passion is counting. He likes to find any opportunity to count – Legos after he has stacked them on top of each other, slats on his
bed’s headboard, cars, really anything that he can find. He is a big fan of this cartoon called Team Umizoomi, and the focus on that cartoon is math. They count (regular counting and by tens so they can get to high numbers), build things with shapes, do subtle addition, and find patterns. With the patterns, they will notice that something has a pattern and they’ll talk the pattern out: “red, blue, yellow. red, blue, yellow. red, blue, what comes next?” “3, 5, 7. 3, 5, 7. 3, 5, what comes next?” I’ll hear Hayden doing this, too, when he’s off counting something. He’ll start saying, “12, 18, 17. 12, 18, 17,” in the same voice/enunciation as the character “Millie” who does the patterns in the cartoon. It’s so cute! Anyway, Hayden is very strong on counting his numbers 1 – 12. Once he gets to 13 he needs a little help. If left to his own devices his counting will go a little like, “10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 80, 40, 100!” He’s getting better everyday, though. John told me that a couple of days ago he counted up to 27! I don’t know what help, if any, John gave him with that one.
He also loves reading numbers, and lately he’s getting distracted when reading books that have numbered pages because he just tries to figure out what the numbers are. Once he gets to 20 and beyond he typically inverts the numbers, so he calls 28 “82,” for instance. He was doing that last week but it is improving quickly.
Another favorite number-related thing he is doing right now is Nanny got him an easel for Christmas that had some magnetic letters and numbers with it, and he’ll go get two numbers from that and ask “what that number is?” So, he’ll bring me a 4 and a 7 for example, and I’ll tell him it’s 47. He’ll give an excited laugh and say, “yeah!” and go get another couple of numbers and ask what it is.
One, six, seven, eight September 1, 2009
Hayden is really into his counting! He will sit on the floor reading his books and start pointing and counting out things on the page. Or he will count as he walks with us up the stairs. He knows his numbers and can also read them, but in Hayden’s world right now the order goes: one, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. If you count with him and get the two in after the one he will usually get the order right, but even then sometimes he will jump straight to that six the first chance he gets. He seems to know the numbers about up to 20, though. Last night he was walking up the stairs with John and they were alternating their counting (John would say one, Hayden two, John three, Hayden four…) and got up to 20 or so. I am always impressed when I count with him going up the stairs and he gets passed ten.
An update on my previous “otay” post: Hayden now says “yeah” quite a bit. We still get some “otays,” but frequently now he is saying “yeah!”
Counting and Alphabet July 14, 2009
Hayden can count to 10 now. We have been incorporating numbers into a lot of things that he does – as he climbs up the stairs we count them out, we have foam numbers in the bath that we line up and count, we count cars when we are driving. He has a very sing-song way of counting; the numbers go up at the end. Last night John and Hayden were counting at dinner and Hayden started alternating his numbers with John. John said 1, Hayden said 2, John said 3, Hayden said 4, and so on. It was so funny! He’s been able to read his numbers for a while now, but saying them in order is new.
He can read all his letters, and now we are working on the alphabet song. Sometimes he chimes in with the right letter while I sing it, but lately I will start singing it and he will take over, just sing ‘C D C D C D’ over and over to the tune of the alphabet song. 🙂
Hayden and Layla's Place 