Les Jones

Home Life > Katie Day 1141

So I was working with Katie on counting, using five pacifiers. We start with three. I ask "How many pacifiers." She says "One-two-three." Four goes fine.

We get to five. She She counts the pacifiers in a different order and counts "One-two-four-five-six."

I try counting to her and she says "No, daddy," pointing to the green pacifier. "That not three. That four."

Do you see what she did? She named the pacifiers one-two-three, etc. Once she gets to the green pacifier she named four her count goes to four because that's its name. Hmmm....

Not a problem, really. If she's counting in the abstract she's fine, and if I had something uniform like five red balls I'm sure it would be fine. But at this age the numbers of real things are labels rather than ordinals for her. Funny stuff - you expect kids to think a certain way, and sometimes they surprise you.