My daughter hit a milestone yesterday. I remember when my son hit it too. It's not the cute first smiles or first claps, but a very cool one to see. My daughter has been adding on her fingers for a while; probably 6 months or more. It was cute because she could add 2 fingers on one hand and 2 fingers on the other hand by counting each little finger. Wun, too, thwee, fwor… FWOR!
I use math to help my son start to focus sometimes. He starts to lose his ability to self-regulate and will start "spinning". He has so much energy and when he starts spinning, he will literally fall off chairs, yell, jump up and down, and just be hard to control because he tends to seek out more stimulation to try and get his mind to focus. I've gotten more accustomed to it and so I sometimes just start barking out math problems to help give him something to focus on. It really works because he has to think it through and for whatever reason, gives his head some stimulation that calms his whole being down.
I think this is where Missy B has caught on to math at such a young age. She seems to be really good at numbers and math in ways that I didn't see in Dexter. He loves to teach her too, so that helps too! I gave her some preschool math apps on her iPad, but she was bored with them. I watched her just do it because she loves to count, not because she didn't know the answer. I downloaded a kindergarten app and sure enough, she's doing well with kindergarten math.
Anyways, so that "last" milestone happened. It was the ability to add more than the fingers on each hand. Most people may not even notice this milestone, but I think it's one of the last that is really easy to see that giant leap in understanding. I'm not really sure why I consider this a huge one, but I remember that when Dexter made that leap, then math had just opened up to a whole new world. It's just so awesome to watch her mind grow and how it works. She is just unbelievably well organized and put together. She even keeps me on task! She is so awesome.
