I started M this morning on the very first page of Miquon, the one I had skipped with B because I didn’t know what to do with it. B counted conventionally and naturally. M thinks differently; he calls one “one”, two “two”, three “One and Two” four “two and two”, five “two and two and one” and six “Mommy I can’t count that high.” Maybe this is because B watched Sesame Street, and M didn’t, we were too busy doing B’s school in the morning for M to get to watch PBSKids in the morning when Sesame Street is broadcast. Also, B has taken over doing his and M’s laundry, which is where I taught him the one to one correspondence of quarters to laundry machine slots when he used to do it with me. M does different chores with me now, so he hasn’t learned that particular thing that way. We have of course read counting books, but as M is up to the Little House books in read aloud time, and we just finished Narnia, picture books have been a little neglected lately.
I held him on my lap and asked him what he thought this page was for. He said a game with white chocolate chips. We talked about what rules it should have, since I wanted him to name the numbers. I didn’t want him to abandon his way of thinking about numbers, or ignore the visual patterns in the domino dot pictures, so I told him that their were lots of patterns on the page, for instance, the rectangles were three rows of three columns. He liked that because it’s his way of counting. Then he traced a line from the one box, to the two, three and four, but then the pattern changed, and he said, it doesn’t keep on being a pattern. He did point out that the colored in circles make an x shape on the page. He noticed how the five pattern was like the four pattern, but with an extra dot in the middle, the seven was like the six in the same way, and the nine was like the eight, but didn’t think that would help him know their names, because he didn’t know the names of six, eight or four, although he just recognized three, two and one. Then he sighed dramatically and announced
“But Mommy, I can’t count!”
I told him that I didn’t know why he said that since he could name the numbers in order, we counted together through 13 when he began to say random teens. Page A1 only goes up to nine, so we didn’t need the teens. I told him that the names of our numbers are annoying to catch hold of, but the Hindu Arabic numerals are so logical that he’ll love them. Then I showed him how if you put a finger on each circle as you say the name, being careful to say only one name as you touch the circle, and not touch any circle twice or skip any, the last name you say is the number of all of them. To prove it, I asked which rectangle had the most circles, he (correctly) pointed to the one in the lower right hand corner. I had him count with me as I touched the circles. Then he touched the circles as we counted together. His face lit up.
We had a minor melt down with tears next, M was not sure how to negotiate how many chips should be on the rectangles, but he pulled himself together, asked politely for two per rectangle, and we were off. His only goof was on counting the seven and touching some dots twice, he caught himself by saying, but the nine is down here, so this can’t be seven.
Another interesting moment came when I asked him if it made a difference what direction he went in counting the eight: he thought he’d get a different number if he counted top down or bottom up. We counted the eights in every pattern we could think of, but each time got the same number name. I suggested that he think about why that would be when he is trying to get sleepy at night in bed.
Then he triumphantly counted the baby’s toes, and ran down the hall to tell B that he could count now.