Blastoff! (Letters & Numbers)

Kate has been learning her numbers lately. This placemat has been helping. She really enjoys it--and the United States one, too! (Thanks, Jennifer!)

Back in May, when Kate was around 22 months old, I was counting something out loud--and she started counting, too! Well, sort of. She said something like, "six, seven, eight" and then some babble/gibberish ... and then some word that she said very enthusiastically. For the life of me, I could not figure out what that word was--and neither could Tanna.

She did this time and time again--saying a number or two, then gibberish, and always ending with that same word--and then clapping. I was quite surprised because I hadn't been working on numbers with her. Heck, at that time, I was excited about every single new word that was coming out of her mouth. (Remember, we had just dropped our speech therapy sessions less than two months prior.)

Well, toward the end of the month, I met with her preschool teacher. She told me about what Kate was doing in school, and that she especially enjoyed arts and crafts activities. She also told me about their class and some of the regular things they did. One of those things was counting to 10--and then saying "BLASTOFF!" LOL! That was the word she was trying to say!

Fast-forward about four months. Now Kate can count to 10 and say "Blastoff!" all by herself. She is also learning to recognize her numbers. She's getting the hang of them, although she confuses three and eight sometimes as well as seven and nine. She enjoys pointing out random numbers that she sees. It's common to hear her say, "It's a number four!" Or "Red two!"


Kate dons her cow boots and "plays magnets," as she likes to say. She loves those letter and number magnets!

I would say that she may be a numbers person like her father, but she is far better at her letters right now than her numbers. (So perhaps she will be a letters person like her mother? ;o)) She can say her whole alphabet (in order now) and has recognized all of her capital letters for quite some time. (We are still working on the lowercase letters.) Kate has been quite obsessed with her A-B-Cs for a few months. Her favorite DVDs--which have no doubt fueled this obsession--are LeapFrog's Letter Factory and Brainy Baby's ABC's: Introducing the Alphabet (which she calls "A-B-C Letters"--she is constantly requesting it); I highly recommend both! She also LOVES her LeapFrog magnet letters and the letter and number magnets that came with her easel (thanks, Georgia!).

It's hard to believe how quickly she is learning. We are so thankful.