Numbers Man

Daniel just amazes me sometimes. Lately it has been to do with numbers. A few months ago Daniel learnt to count past 20. I helped him with 21, 22 and then he noticed the pattern and continued on his own saying '23, 24...' I again helped him with 30 and then he straight away said '31, 32'. Because I was 32 Daniel seemed to stop there. Eventually he counted independently to 60, only having help with the tens.

While Mum and Dad were away he showed them his counting and he made it all the way to 110! I needed to help him with 70, 80, 90 and 100 but he did the rest of the patterns on his own. I was so impressed!

Then on Monday morning Daniel was playing with the kitchen timer and he just worked out how to read the numbers 17 and 16. Using the timer he set it to 18mins. He said 'there's an 8 and a 1'. I said 'that's 18 - 1 ten and 8 ones'. When it had started to count down I said 'what number is that?' He said 17. Then it went down to 16, 15, 14 and he kept excitedly telling me the numbers as they changed. He is very good at patterns!

Then he said 'three-teen'. I said 'think carefully. What number?'. Straight away he said 'thirteen'. He does amaze me. Then 12 and then he went and played with something else.

It is so lovely watching this growth and learning happen as these early stages although it does leave me amazed at how I was teaching kids in Year 1 who had no idea of numbers 10-20 let alone numbers up to 100.