Stella Can Count To 10 (and more!)

Stella loves to count. She is not just rote counting by just saying the names of the numbers in sequence, she can actually count and is very good at it. She is quite capable of counting from 1 – 100 with very few mistakes.

It was only a little over a year ago when she happily helped me sort my barrel of teddy bears into 4 colour groups. (Some people, including the toyshop staff who sold me the teddy bears years ago, believe that pre-schoolers are incapable of such an activity. Well, not all pre-schoolers are identical are they?) Then she decided to line the teddy bears within the same group according to their size. The teddy bear counters come in 3 sizes. She used to also create stories, telling me what the groups of teddy bears were up to.

Stella still enjoys sorting teddy bears, spools or other counters into groups. Nowadays, I get her to group identical things in 10’s. Through experimenting on her own, she is now aware that 10 red mama bears = 10 blue mama bears. It doesn’t matter if the red ones were ‘holding hands’ in a circle or the blues ones were lined up like school children. She is aware that there are 10 in each group even if they are standing differently and she makes sure by counting each group again. She also discovers the meaning of x groups of 10, showing me that she is beginning to understand basic multiplication. So, if I ask how many bears are there in 2 groups of 10 teddy bears, she would quickly line up 2 groups of 10 teddy bears and then count the total, to give me the answer.

We play other counting games as well. Sometimes I just make things up as I go along. I might tell her that 10 baby bears are going to the beach but two got sick and had to stay at home. Then I ask her how many baby bears are going to the beach. She is usually very quick with this type of questions. She has plenty of practice and loves the attention that I give her in these 1:1 sessions. It doesn’t take long either. We don’t spend hours drilling. That is just not my style.