Sunday, December 28, 2008

Rachel Counts (in more ways than one!)


I am enjoying Winter Break, a chance to catch my breath in the midst of a busy school year. We are in the Smokies with family for the holidays. This has given me lots of good time with granddaughter Rachel, who reports her age as three and three-quarters. Like her father and uncle when they were this age, she delights in patterns and numbers. We count pennies as we play dreidel. We count blocks and toys and the cookies we cut out of the sugar cookie dough. We count cards as we play Concentration (Memory), where she shows a strong visual memory. Her number sense seems to strengthen every day. We were building with her baby sister's blocks one day. We had established the previous day there were ten of the soft rubbery blocks in all. We were trying to recreate a structure we had built the day before, but could not as some were missing. She carefully counted out eight blocks. I asked her how many were missing. She thought for a moment. "Two! " she announced. Later we found one of the missing blocks and added a bear to the structure.

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