Growing and Learning, Part One: A-B-C, 1-2-3!

Last night I started drafting up this blog post, and it turned out so long that I decided to break it up into a few smaller parts. So, wihtout further ado, here is Part 1 of how our little man has been growing up lately.

As a former school teacher, now embarking upon the lifelong task of schooling my own little one, I've had a favorite quote on my heart:

Children want to learn to the degree that they are unable to distinguish learning from fun. - Glenn Doman

Our little Brett has been astounding us lately with his gigantic leaps and bounds when it comes to cognitive, verbal, motor skills, and even spiritual development. We are really starting to see this sweet, precious little baby racing down the highway to become a self-sufficient, communicative big boy. Accompanying this realization is a strong urge to provide Brett with all the educational building blocks he needs to really thrive, while still having plenty of fun.

For example, Brett has taken quite an interest in his ABCs. You may have watched the Alphabet Pal/Dad video from last month...now, Brett sings along with "Al-Pal," and has even identified the letter A from a set of foam characters. To continue to cultivate this love for letters, I created a flash-card project, specially customized for Brett. I took photos of lots of things he already knows and loves, each starting with a different letter of the alphabet. Then, each of these photos will be turned into a laminated flashcard with the letter on the front, and a place to practice forming the letter on the back. We'll have four sets, so they can be used for a memory game down the road, and I might even make one set into fridge magnets.

Brett has also been learning his numbers. He now successfully counts to ten, sometimes all by himself, with no prompting. Okay, so right now he skips the number eight, but he knows it's supposed to be there! He's such a little tease. I often catch him counting his own shoes, crayons, or even the cherries printed on a drinking glass. He loves counting! Today we practiced our numbers by counting out the number of seconds our homemade tortillas were cooking, so they wouldn't burn. We've also made counting fun with songs, doing dive-bomb-countdowns when feeding him, or counting down with the microwave.

Okay, so that's it for Part 1: Letters and Numbers. Anyone else have cool tips, tools, or tricks to help their kiddos expand their mental horizons? We'd love to hear about it!

And here's the teaser for tomorrow: Part 2: The Arts!