A Numbers Game.

Although for the first two years of my teaching career I taught math almost exclusively, I've recently been teaching reading.

This shows up in my parenting.

Ellie and George.  Just because.

I don't have a ton of early number games, and I don't think to use the games I know naturally.  I have made some printable books, we try to sort, we count, but that's as good as it gets.  Ellie gets far more math at school than at home.

But I decided to get a little more intentional.  I found a set online that has magnets and great visuals.

Here's what I learned:

Ellie knows to touch each thing as she counts.
Ellie can rote count.
Ellie cannot combine the two skills.
Ellie can recognize most of the digits. (This was a big surprise!)
Ellie cannot correlate the digit to the number of items.

And another photo just for fun.

I know what Ellie needs to learn!  This little set is super fun.  Minor detail is that since it's on Zulily, it won't last long.  However, it looks like you can buy direct (for a bit more) here.

Image via Zulily

So let's see how long we can go before Ellie either a) learns her numbers and gets bored, b) loses all the pieces, or c) turns the pieces into food for her stuffed animals.

Betting on c)