On Saturday morning, Hubby told me, “Darius can pronounce n very clearly now”. Indeed, a moment later, he uttered n as it is instead of breaking it up into two syllabus, “a…nin”

Since the time when he first spoke the Chinese Word, 奶 (“nai”) for milk, he got better at saying sounds that start with n than others.

About one month or more back, I was casually saying out the numbers for him during mealtimes, using my fingers to show him when he repeated “nine” after me. I tried a few times, but he would only say nine. And he would say it starting with the n sound. “n…nai….n” I mentioned to hubby and brushed it aside since he was only repeating after me.

Again, I did not actively teach him numbers nor counting. I was focused more on reading words to him and telling him what they stood for. Numbers were only occasionally said during mealtimes when I had nothing to do while feeding him, mostly after I remembered to sing the nice Counting song from Baby Genius- Favourite Sing-A-Longs:

1,2, I love you. 3,4, Let’s count some more. 5,6 Get your kick. 7,8 ‘cos counting is great. 9,10, numbers are friends. Let’s count them all again!

When were at Marina Barrage last Saturday, there was this wall of numbers mentioning about ten things we should know about Marina Barrage. Hubby, in a moment of fun, just decided to ‘test’ him. He pointed to one number, saying the name and proceeded. 1…2….3….4….5…. Finally, he reached 8 and just before he could say 9, Darius said, “NINE!”

We burst into laughter as we were amused by him speaking it and at the same time happy that he recognised the symbol 9.

Back home, I had been working on the Brown Bear Tot Book stuff where we did up these little laminated cards with pictures of animals from the Brown Bear, Brown Bear book with numbers written underneath them. So Hubby again went through the stack with him. Showing him, 1…2…3…. Again, BEFORE he could show 9, when he was still on the number 8 card, Darius blurted out, “nine!” He always like to anticipate what’s coming after.

This surprised us, as he doesn’t only recognised the symbol 9, he actually knows that it comes AFTER eight, because the number 9 card was hidden behind card 8 and he hasn’t seen the number at all.

We then showed him the card itself and asked him, “What is this?” He again told us, “Nine”. So we confirmed that it was not a fluke. He did know how to read 9.

My conclusion of how he knew the numbers without me even showing him the symbols was, he might have noticed it from some of the storybooks which I had been reading with him in Tot School. Or he might have gotten to know the numbers from playing with his Fisher-Price toy phone. He loves to listen to that toy and it’s an essential when we bring him outside to keep him quiet for a few minutes.

He Knows 4, 6, 7

Yesterday, we managed to take a video and we accidentally discovered that he knew how to say 4, 6 and 7 too! 4 might be due to us saying it to him just over the weekend while going down the lift, asking him to look up at the numbers going down.. 4…3….2….1.

6 and 7 was probably due to his ‘love’ for the Sssss sound. But he still doesn’t know how to pronounce it fully. Knowing to say, “ssss….” for six and “ssseh……..ver” That’s what we heard in the video. Note that there’s no word underneath the number so he couldn’t have known that they are spelt starting with S.

Here’s the Video of how he sounded, using the laminated cards and also a book on counting which we seldom use with him. (Lately, he flips it by himself rather often even though it’s a big and heavy book.)

I’m again dumbfounded by the fact that he could read and recognise the number, not just counting from 1-10 blindly, without any active teaching. So my guess is, reading storybooks related to numbers (not flashcard type), playing with toys related to alphabets and numbers, plus his very sensitive hearing and keen interest in music and sounds, contributed to this learning all by himself.

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