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Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Alycia Can Count 1 - 20

Alycia has been able to count her numbers from 1 through 14 for quite a long time already, but no matter how I made her memorize 14 through 20, she still got the teens all jumbled up.

For the last 1 week, each time I brought Alycia and Sherilyn for their evening walks, I'd ask Alycia to count her 1 through 20. She always got her 1-14 perfectly memorized but when it comes to 15 onwards, she'd just get stuck and all sorts of non-sequence numbers will spill out from her mouth, like 14, 7, 16, 15, 9 ..... alamak, :slap forehead: Yesterday during our evening walk, as Alycia was in the midst of counting her numbers, a squirrel darted across the road all of a sudden. I then excited shouted "look Alycia, that's a squirrel". Alycia who was still counting, nonchalantly counted "fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty" as she fixated her eyes on the squirrel excitedly. I then shouted in delight "Alycia, you got all your numbers right, mummy is so happy and proud of you" and then gave her a big hug, patted her back and praised her further. We were both so happy that she finally got her 1 through 20 recited perfectly without any numbers missing in between.

So my conclusion is I think a child learns better if she/he is in a relaxed, calm, non-tensed mode. They even learn better when they are at play. Perhaps I had put Alycia into a tensed mode when I kept insisting that she has to get all her numbers right. I was so wrong....what a kiasu mummy I am!

4 comments:

Chinneeq said...

shireen, teach her to count in more language, very fun one....qiqi counts in mandarin, english and now hokkien.

Health Freak Mommy said...

I am now teaching her to count in BM & mandarin, but not consistently, only when i remember. Tks 4 reminding me :)

Anonymous said...

Ahhh..!! so clever..!! chloe knows only .. 1,2,3, .... 7, 8, 9,.. hhahaha!! and no .. we donch push her.. she will pick it up.. when she is ready.. that's how PB thinks.. ;)
Plus you know we are lazy.. ;)

Health Freak Mommy said...

Mamabok... yes, it's very true that we shdln't push our kids. Let them pick up when they r ready, else pushing will only backfire on the kid.