conuly

1. Counting. She's known her numbers (every last number! Yup! Quite a feat for a wee tyke! (Seriously, only to about 16 or so)) since forever ago. We're now working on "understanding what numbers mean".

A while back she glommed onto the concept of counting, but she'd go one, two, three... 45678910...! and way overcount whatever it was. Now she finally knows how to stop, but she still will often miss a few, or forget that one is a number, and not just a word meaning "I've started counting!"

However, I think that with a lot of work (every day, everything, it's "how many? Let's count!" or "Help me count the blank. I need six of them"), she should be a counting pro within a few months. Certainly by her birthday.

2. She does not, however, recognize what the numbers are. She knows that some symbols are numbers, but she doesn't know how to match each symbol to its number word. I'm going to start working on that when I start working more on...

3. Letter recognition. She can recognize *some* letters and their ASL counterparts, but not very many of them. And she's already a bit bored and frustrated with that, so I'm going to ease up on it until she's more interested. I'd be surprised if we do anything with these two before her next birthday, if then. However, we'll probably continue with...

4. Basic "sounds make up words" games. Things like "Gee. Mmmm. That's a nice sound. Muh muh muh emmmm. I wonder, what words start with mmmm? Hm. Maybe... mm mm mm mouse. That's an mmm word! Mouse. Ana, can you think of an mmm word? What about mmmmoon? (Ana: Moon!) Yeah, moon, an mmm word!" and on and on and on. Or "Cat. Bat. Hat. Can you think of any other words like that. Oooh, that! That sounds like cat, and hat, and bat. What else? What about... sat?" She doesn't get the point yet, nor should she, but at this age the point is to introduce her to the game, which is why it's best played either on the bus or with the whole family. I don't anticipate this bearing fruit until she's four or so.

5. Reading. Heh. I'm not working on that, really - she wants to, though. She's clearly wanting to be able to read, like, yesterday. Instead, we're working on me reading to her a lot. It's a nice trade (We should read to our bunnies often, after all). Unlikely she'll be reading any time soon, much though she tries.

6. Shapes. She's got these largely down pat, but I want to work on them a little more, maybe pointing out shapes in places *other* than in shape books or shape sorter toys. She has a tendancy to temporarily forget what a shape is called, too. Still, I figure we'll have perfected this better in a few weeks (if we work on it) or a month or so (if we just bring it up regularly, which is my preference - she's got enough on her plate with the counting and toilet training).

7. Sharing and taking turns. She's fairly good at this for her age, mostly (I think) because that's the crux of everything. Everything we do is a chance to say "Your turn. MY TURN!" over and over again, or "can I borrow that, please? Thank you. Here, now you can have it again". She's pretty much accomplished the goal of "knowing how to take turns and share", we're just working for upkeep now.

8. Please and thank you. She's pretty good with thank you, not so much with please. So I'm going to keep reminding her to say please, and also be more consistent in saying please to her. Not to concerned about this one, either.

9. Toilet training. This has moved back since the baby was born. I'm hardly surprised. She's actually wet her pants a few times. So I'm going to set up a schedule when I know she's likely to need to go, and put her on the toilet then, if we stay inside the house. If we go out, we'll all of us go sit on the toilet before we leave wherever we are, and immediately after we arrive wherever it is. If I can convince her to do so.... She'll be fine.

10. Smelling things and identifying them. This is mostly just fun, though it has its practical purposes. It's one of her favorite things to do, though she can't identify anything by the smell yet. Instead, she smells it and asks me what it is, which is perfectly fine. Unlikely we'll reach any useful goal before her next birthday, but we've already reached the goal of "having fun with it".

11. Basic safety rules. She knows everybody's first and last name (well, she forgets sometimes that I'm not a Felder, but that's liveable). Now we need to seriously work on "always stay where I can see you", and "don't run off after I tell you stop, even in a safe place like the museum" and "if you get lost (god forbid), don't wander around, just stay where you are and we'll find you". The last is a hard one, I think. The sooner she masters this, the better.

12. Whining. That's got to end. NOW. No idea how to stop it other than what I'm doing, which is ignoring it or giving her a time-out specifically for whining, and not giving her what she wants unless she asks nicely (or at least semi-nicely).

That's a huge list. It's not as bad as all that, though - right now we're mostly only working on the numbers, the shapes (still), and the toilet training. And the safety.