Ask HN: How did you teach your baby children to count?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29657331

by herodoturtle • 5 years ago

5 18 5 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Dad here, young baby, crowd-sourcing tips and insights.

Happy holidays everyone.

yuppie_scum• 5 years ago

Songs are probably the easiest.

mikece2• 5 years ago

Anything musical will stick — I can attest to that! I don’t recall how we taught our oldest to count but for the other seven the older siblings have been eager to help teach the younger ones what they know (both the good and the bad).

cutthegrass22• 5 years ago

Incredible, if i'm reading this right (tired eyes, kids were up all night), you have 8 children?

Curious if you have any words of wisdom to share around managing daily life with that many kids?

yesenadam• 5 years ago

The funky, fabulous Sesame Street Pinball Number Count song (All segments) ft. the Pointer Sisters (1976)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC7l3V1nhWc

timthorn• 5 years ago

Every evening, I'd count slowly (~1-2Hz) and continuously until my son was asleep. It worked both to teach counting and to help him settle - even on nights where he fought going to sleep he'd usually be out by 200.

muzani3• 5 years ago

With 2/3 of my kids, I'm the one who's out first. The kids get excited and I end up having to go to 500.

gobins• 5 years ago

I bought a bunch of picture books for children which are for counting. Repetition is also a key, I try to read the books every day before sleep.

brudgers• 5 years ago

Ten Terrible Dinosaurs is the one I remember reading regularly when my child was little.

But it was just another book we read.

tonteldoos• 5 years ago

The count... Seriously though, like another poster said, repetition is key. They eventually develop context around it as well.

muzani3• 5 years ago

I count every step I go down the stairs with them. Count whenever you put food in their bowl. Just play with them, count with fingers or pebbles.

ashwinipatankar• 5 years ago

This is the way to go. Stairs counting And Steps counting are awesome way to make them fall in love with numbers. Also, while on a walk, tell them what is what like these are stairs, that is a donkey etc. despite they can utter it or not. One more comes to my mind, tell the spelling while looking at the things like if there is ice cream written somewhere, say it like I C E C R E A M.

muzani3• 5 years ago

Kids just love spelling random things, it's like playing a video game for them. My kids have trouble sitting still when putting on their clothes, so I ask them what's on their shirt, what's on my shirt. You can start easy like colors, or animals. They recognise letters well too as long as the font isn't weird. My 13 month old can't talk yet, but he will point to letters if I ask him "Where's A?"

austincheney• 5 years ago

A bowl of twenty oranges. I made the child say the number out loud as they moved oranges from one bowl to another one at a time.

Spooky23• 5 years ago

Honestly, just count everything. My wife would make games out of counting white cars or VW Bugs or garbage trucks on the road.

Later, it transitioned into number facts. Our little guy was comfortable with basic multiplication in kindergarten/1st grade and seems to have a real intuitive sense of numbers. It was awesome when he “discovered” division on his own by subtracting.

Each kid is different, but whatever makes numbers a natural thing and not something to be feared is a win.

fontenot-jon• 5 years ago

start with single tone monkey grunt, bump up to double tone with grunt variation on the incrememt, and grouping. then add complexity of grunts for mathmatical operations, and sliiide into phonetics by teaching them each phoneme as a number "from 44-329?" then introduce positional alpha/numer/symbol systems with enhancing complexity based on relevant daily task implimentation for activity description and/or teem logic building

thorin• 5 years ago

Don't overthink it! I've found counting and going through the alphabet at bedtime to relax, but they will get it eventually whatever you do. My son has always been fairly reluctant to read and write (he's 6) and all of a sudden he can read books at his age above and write several pages of text. It happened so quickly that I'm not conscious of anything in particular we did, he just levelled up developmentally.

Ask HN: How did you teach your baby children to count?

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