Count

We are in the process of teaching Ellie to count. Which is interesting considering that she can't/won't even repeat all of the numbers yet, but whatever. You can't succeed if you don't try! Don't worry - we haven't become those overzealous parents with a stop watch and flash cards drilling our weary child on her times tables. Far from it! But we are very casually working on teaching her to count. And lucky for us, she loves to do things repeatedly. She loves it when we sing the Count to Ten song and she also loves The Count on Sesame Street (who she calls "Ah, Ah, Ah"), so she has lots of exposure and she seems to like the idea of counting if nothing else. She says some numbers and she has connected that some words are numbers. For instance if you pull her back in the swing and say "one, two...", she'll say "three!" in anticipation of something fun happening. And whenever someone counts a series of numbers, Ellie usually responds with "Ah, Ah, Ah!" like The Count does, so she knows what we're doing is counting. Or she relates numbers to The Count, but either way it's all related. (yes, I realize that our child is obsessed with Sesame Street, but hopefully she's actually getting some knowledge out of it!).

She also has a favorite number. If you ask her how many there is of something like, how many buses passed, she will consistently answer "Five". Whether it was one or five or twenty the answer is always five. To everything. Always five.

How old are you? "Five"
What time is it? "Five"
How many meatballs do you want? "Five"

The girl loves her five. It feels like she's gone leaps and bounds since turning one, so it's crazy when you stop to think about all the basic things that she still needs to learn - colors, shapes, numbers, letters...the list goes on and on. Luckily, Marty and I think the process of teaching is fun, and Ellie (so far) seems very receptive to learning so it's only a matter of time. And of course, there's no rush - there aren't any flashcards and stopwatches in her future. At least not until she's 2. (I kid, I kid)