What do I do with my two year old?

[ChristineW]

My older two kids are bright, maybe gifted but I don't know. Its hard to tell at 4 and 5, but their 28 month old sister is different. She knows all her letters and sounds--and yells them loudly when she sees them on the street. People stare at me like I'm some evil tiger mom b/c she's small for her age but its not me pushing. She isn't ready for reading but she sits and watches her siblings OPGR.

 

She can count up to 20 and down from 10 and yesterday brought DH 6 quarters and said " daddy, 'Sees' (which is how she says six) then she counted them out for him. She counts and says her numbers incessantly. She loves her brother's cuisenaire rods and counts them out and sorts them. She puts them in size order too--after she saw her brother do it once. She's pretty good at doing the pattern blocks and building towers too. I am not gifted in math. Language is my thing. What the heck do I do with my 2 year old?

[Karenciavo]

Let her keep playing? Be intentional about bringing math into your daily conversation if you like.

[theYoungerMrsWarde]

:lurk5: I also have a 2 yo who has known all his letters and phonetic sounds for a while. He also knows numerals 1-10 (up to twenty is iffy,) understands one-to-one, and can count up to 20 and down from 10. He's also a lot more verbal than ds#1 was at this age, and has memorized a lot of songs. And all the basic shapes, though he might be color blind.

 

I am afraid to try to teach him to read because I'm afraid at this age he'll just memorize the words instead of blending/sounding them out.

 

I would like some guidance in this as well. (And I'm not a tiger mom, either. He learned all this watching big brother doing it.)

[jenbrdsly]

I have a road map of what to do with kids like this on the Where to Start page on my blog. Just skip the beginning part where I explain how to teach toddlers their letters and sounds (you've already got that part covered!) and go to the section titled "The Middle". That's where we are with my 25m daughter right now. We do a Morning Message each day, make homemade books, and do a lot of hands-on working with words activities.

[TracyP]

I would just follow her lead. What does *she* want you to do with her?:001_smile:

 

If she is gifted you will not slow her down by not doing "enough" at this age. I have heard, but have not seen myself, that studies have shown that very young gifted kids actually do better when they are allowed to make connections themselves rather than being led to them. Whether or not this is the case, following her lead is safe middle ground.

[beaners]

My middle daughter is nearly 2.5 and sounds pretty similar. She can blend sounds but can't hold more than two or three sounds in her head. She knows numbers by rote and understands one to one correspondence, but she loses track counting out around four or five objects.

 

We've been on a puzzle binge lately. She surprised me by pulling out one of the 24 piece puzzles, and she can do all of those up through the 36 piece puzzles we have. 70 piece and up are still too tough. I try to provide a lot of spatial reasoning opportunities, and I frequently dump out our huge tub of duplo blocks or wooden blocks. We also have pattern blocks and similar toys to build with.

 

I do some sequencing activities like lacing cards and lacing beads that also help with small muscle strength and coordination. We do playdoh and dress-up dolls and coloring for small muscle purposes as well. I've found that this child is far more coordinated than her older sister, but I also have her work on large muscle activities like climbing and hopping and walking on a balance beam (aka an old landscape timber) and carrying things around the yard. I also try to do things that cross the midline and involve both sides of the body, like crawling.

 

Obviously we read a ton and talk about what words mean and how they're spelled. We have alphabet and number magnets on the fridge for the kids to play with. I try to pick out library books ahead of time based on current interests. (Dinosaurs! My daughter told me that Diplodocus is her favorite right now.)

 

She also joins in when we do French. She knows quite a few words, and if you ask her to jump or dance or hop etc, she will go do it. She doesn't actually speak much, but she can understand a lot. We rarely watch movies, but if we do it is in French. We also sing some songs in French.

 

A lot of what we do probably looks like what other parents with children the same age or slightly older would do on their own. I make a point of including the things that haven't gotten as much attention, so there is a deliberate aspect to it. If we are outside, I give the children time to play make believe games. I also go and begin playing things if they come pester me, which is my hint that they are done with their own games. If we are sitting in the house I take things out and start playing with them myself.

 

I was interrupted by two phone calls while I was typing this, so you've probably gotten a few more responses since I began.

[abbeyej]

If you really want some guidance, I think that Saxon K might actually work well for you. I'm not a fan of Saxon otherwise, but the K program for a preschooler is actually a lot of fun. There's *no* written work, but each day there's a lesson (you don't have to follow the script exactly -- just skim it ahead of time so you know what to do) and some manipulative to play with. It's very much a "sit on the floor and *play* with such-and-such like this and present such-and-such a concept like that"... It's more a matter of teaching *you* how to present these things in a fun and age-appropriate way.

 

I certainly don't think you *need* a curriculum, but I can also understand when it's reassuring to have a roadmap.

 

Someone else mentioned puzzles. Also a huge hit with my math-sharp son when he was 2. We started with 12-piece wooden puzzles (they come 4 to a box from Melissa & Doug) and quickly progressed to 48 piece puzzles. (He was capable of doing the 96 piece puzzles at 2, but was more likely to lose interest and wander off, lol...)

[SnegurochkaL]

I understand how you feel about very advance for her age child. I felt the same way when my 2 years old son started counting in French instead of English. He learnt counting in English at age of 3.( He picked it up from my 6 years old daughter, who was learning French). I suggest let her to do puzzles, mazes, sequence games, paint pictures whatever she likes. You can borrow books from the library for young kids dealing with math. They love it.

[boscopup]

At that age with my oldest, I found that leaving him alone to learn on his own was the best thing I could do. If he wanted to discover a mathematical property, he was welcome to! I'd discuss things with him as they came up, but I let him do his thing. We had many great van conversations about math. He discovered multiplication on his own. I didn't try to teach him any math. I just let him discover it himself. This worked fabulously for him.

 

He was the same with reading. Trying to teach him actually slowed him down. When I stopped trying to teach him, he took off. ;)

 

Just talk about math when your DD wants to, and don't push it. If she's really good at math, she'll show that on her own without you using any curriculum. :)

[cmarango]

Sounds rather normal for us too. My dd is just like yours..pointing out letters (mainly on the trash receptacles in Subway and the PO) and counting like crazy. Although, I believe she learned counting in Spanish first - at that age some words were easier in spanish than English. Keep doing what you are doing...puzzles, mazes, stickers, glue, counting, sorting, ordering, beginning pattern work were all fun for my dd at that age.

 

Now my ds who is not yet 2 surprised the heck out of me yesterday when I found him working intently on putting together a 6 piece jigsaw puzzle. He is not overly verbal (maybe just 50 words between the 2 languages) but his gross motor skills far surpass what my dd possessed at that age. Love how unique they all are!

[SnegurochkaL]

His gross motor skills far surpass what my dd possessed at that age. Love how unique they all are!

 

:iagree: I felt the same way when I found my 1 year son with scissors shortening his " too long" blanket. He didn't like the the way it looked. It was his first phrase he said to me when I was inquiring what he had been doing.