Babystar is a genius and also she knows nothing.
She knows that she is two years old, and she can hold up two fingers. I am certain she has no concept of time. She doesn’t know what ‘two-years-old’ means.
She can count to ten. I am pretty sure this is solely because her 20-year-old brother makes her count to ten before BLASTOFF. Blastoff is a game they play where he flies her to the kitchen and back. I pretend I don’t understand it because I don’t want to play.
She can count her toys or her fingers or her books. She can bring me three books. She understands amounts, especially amounts of cookies. But she has no clue what a five looks like.
We bought this Melissa & Doug puzzle to try to help her learn what the numbers look like. ($7.99) It is sort of working. She has 1, 3, 4 and 8 on lockdown. She knows where 7 fits in the puzzle, but she doesn’t know that it is seven. 6 and 9 are a lot of fun because they fit in each other’s spots. 2 and 5 give her trouble. They are almost the same but they aren’t the same at all. (Except on a calculator so she’s basically a genius.)
She calls this puzzle her Number Game and she loves playing her Number Game. She’ll get there.
I totally need to Pinterest-Mom DIY a number matching game for her, and I totally will. Someday. Maybe when she goes to college and I have a few minutes to myself. For now, we match the puzzle numbers to the numbers on her wooden blocks and then name the numbers.
MAYDAY MAYDAY: DOES ANYONE ELSE HAVE ANY IDEAS THAT ARE SUPER EASY AND SUPER EFFECTIVE?
I also bought these flash cards from the Target dollar aisle. One of them is for numbers. I haven’t opened any of these boxes. They are in the ’emergency distraction’ drawer. I’ll think of a number game soon. Maybe.
Babystar busted out with ‘eleven, twelve’ the other day and I was all, what do you know about twelve?!?
It turns out that her iPad plays a song that counts to twelve, and she knows about clock numbers from Blue’s Clues.
Then I figured out that her laptop* plays a song that counts to twenty. And Babystar has learned up to fourteen. Guess what comes after fourteen? Fourteen!
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14.
This is where we live now. Good enough.
RAISING BABYSTAR: $21,184.43
*This laptop that was a birthday present last year from her uncle. It also totally taught her the alphabet. But she calls N ‘newt’. It is so freaking cute and I don’t want to correct her. Can we all just agree to change the pronunciation of N to ‘newt‘? Please? Ok, cool, thanks.
Wallace only recently stopped calling 12 “tweven,” which was super cute. My cheapest idea for you is to not worry about it. She is 2, there is no rush. When she’s interested in something, go with it and point things out in your daily lives. As soon as you invest a lot of time or money in trying to teach a toddler a subject, they stop wanting to learn. We count our steps on stairs, train engines, cars, things we see, and point out numbers we come across.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s good advice. She was finding numbers at Costco yesterday without my lead. (She didn’t know which numbers they were but she knew they were numbers and not letters.)
I sort of thought I needed to help while she was interested. But I think you’re right. I need to chill out. 🙃
Thanks for the perspective.
LikeLike
Just match her enthusiasm!
LikeLiked by 1 person
We have that same puzzle and the flash cards as well! I think puzzles and books have worked the best for teaching those sorts of things to our kids because they’re just playing…learning while playing, but they don’t know that. And my kids’ interests change from week to week so I just try to keep up as best I can, lol!
LikeLike
Don’t let her listen to U2 or you’ll have 14 issues forever. What’s that damn song where he goes “uno, dos, tres, catorce”. WHAT.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good advice but hard to live by since U2 is STILL on my phone and whenever I plug it into the car charger it just starts playing like a horror movie.
LikeLike
My 4yo has a bit of trouble counting, but she’s slowly getting better. We did a craft when she was first learning the numbers 1-10 by sight where I had her cut out paper numbers (which I drew first), then she glued on the corresponding number of things (beads, pasta pieces, etc.) while counting them. I’m not sure how helpful that was, but it was fun. 🙂
LikeLike