Fun with numbers and words

Yesterday I was reading Violet a book, Chicka Chicka 1, 2, 3, and there are apples in the tree. Apple is one of her favorite words, so she pointed to one of the apples and said "apple." Then she pointed to two apples at the same time and said "apples." She's been doing that a lot - saying words in the singular and then plural to show us that she knows the difference. Smart cookie!

Finally, we were at one of the last pages in the book and we were just looking at the picture together. I count with her often - this means that she points and I say the numbers for her. But yesterday, she just started counting the apples in the tree without me asking her to. She counted from one to nine and then pointed to the tenth one and turned to look at me to tell her what number came next. I wasn't too surprised to hear her get to five, since 1-5 is what we've focused on so far (counting five fingers on one hand, etc.), but I was really thrilled when she kept going all the way to nine.

She'll also distinguish between letters and numbers. If we're looking at something that's all numbers, she'll say "numbers," and if they're words or letters, she'll say "letters." We have a set of foam letters/numbers that go on the bathtub wall and if she doesn't know what the number is (she knows all her letters now, though she doesn't always want to say them), she'll tell you what color it is instead.

So much fun!