Learning Words and Numbers

Caleb loves learning.  He’s known numbers and letters for probably almost a year now.  He was pretty good at counting up to 20.  But recently, he’s been practicing past 20.  Caleb also loves reading, and he’s always asking about words in the books he’s reading.  “What’s that word?” is a common question he asks while reading his books.  Of course sometimes he points to numbers in the books as well.  Generally, when Caleb picks up on something, he runs with it.  For example, we were reading a garbage truck book for bedtime recently.  On the last page, it says, “Who am I?  The garbage truck, that’s who.”  So you might hear Caleb say, “Who am I? The garbage truck, that’s who.”  Or he may even vary it a little bit, by saying, “Why am I?  Caleb, that’s who.”

Now this is all fun and cute if he recalls the proper things.  If you go to Amazon.com, you can take a look at this book inside, First Virtues for Toddlers.  You can click the “Search inside this book” link and view the table of contents.  Well, Caleb was doing his duty on the potty chair.  While he was reading this book, he points at a number and asks what this number is.  I answer 69.

Caleb, unaware of the sexual connotations of this number, uses it to answer many things that have to do with numbers.  Caleb lately likes to ask, “what time is it?”  Of course I tell him the time, even though he really doesn’t understand the concept of time.  It’s all a set up for him.  It’s like tossing up a softball.  He already knows what he’s going to say.