We never formally introduced numbers to her and she never showed any interest in them until a little before 2 years of age. What we did do was introduce her to a lot of pre-math skills.

Pre-math skills

Some skills are essential to be mastered before a child comprehends the concept of counting. For example, sorting (based on color, shape, size, etc), understanding big and small, more and less, patterns matching, etc. Although she was exposed to these since about a year, she started showing an active interest in these only after about 15 months.

Counting and number sense

At some point of time, when she started sorting onions in the kitchen, I found her automatically counting them. She was in charge of picking out the vegetables we would cut and she loved counting them. When we would walk down stairs, she would diligently count them up and down and marvel at how they were the same, always.… Click to read the rest

The night sky has always fascinated V. Obviously, it is magnificent to look at, always changing and mysterious. Montessori says, “The strength of imagination in a child under six is usually expended on toys and fairy tales, but surely we can give him real things to imagine about, so putting him in more accurate relationship with the environment.” So we never really told her sweet stories of the sun going to sleep and gave her the truth like it is. One of her first questions on space was about the moon. “

Where is the moon in the morning?”

The day and night conundrum! We explained that we can see the sun in the daytime and the moon, at night. But why? Her dad explained the whole rotation of the Earth concept. All we needed was a torch light and a ball in a dark room to understand this glorious magic of night and day.… Click to read the rest