I have been running flashcards, LM and even some Montessori techniques with my daughter since she was 12 months or so. She is now 22 months. The problem is that while she seems to love numbers - oftentimes even stopping in the street in order to point and read numbers aloud from registration plates on cars - she obviously finds it much harder to recognise quantities. When there are, say, three cats in a picture and I ask her: “How many cats?”, she starts counting them from one but she never stops at three. In other words, she is always overcounting, continuing automatically until I say: “Really? Where do you see the fourth cat?”, or something like that.
Does anybody else have this problem? If so, what should one do to correct it? As far as I can see I have done everything correctly as far as order of learning goes. I started with Doman dots only, then made flashcards with dots on one side and numbers on the other, then moved to LM and now to a Montessori spindle box. As with so many other toddlers, however, she has only showed limited interest in LM. One problem, I think, is that lessons in LM are simply too long. This especially goes for mathematical operations lessons.
It could be that she has somehow managed to learn the natural numbers, as well as order, before understanding quantity. This is very probable since she is not interested in the Montessori sandpaper numbers I recently bought her, simply because she already knows all the numbers. I have read that such an order of learning could be detrimental to a child and should be avoided. But if the damage is already done, i.e. she cannot relate natural numbers to quantities, what should I then do? Any suggestions?
Some general comments, it sounds like she lacks one-to-one correspondence. There are little things that you can do to really work on that skill and it won’t require any new products. When you are counting, touch each item.
If you are counting dots, [ o o o o ] then count with your child like this: Touch the 1st dot o and say “one dot”, touch the next o and say “two dots” o “three dots” o “four dots”. There are 4 dots: 1, 2, 3, 4.
Basically just count in a way that clarifies that:
o is one dot.
o o is two dots
o o o is three dots
o o o o is four dots, and so one
When you are reading picture books, count pictures on the page.
When you are reading Number books, count each item one by one and say “One THING, Two THINGS, Three THINGS…Seven THINGS” where “THING” is the object being counted and when you get to the last one, say “There are 7 THINGS”.
One of the members of this forum (Korrale, maybe?) wrote on their blog a short series: How and Why I Taught My Tot Math and if I remember correctly, she addresses people in exactly your position. Parents of children who come to a stalling point after LM and/or Doman.
Not sure what you are doing but when starting to learn one-to-one counting it is best to start with concrete objects that they can move while they count them. So if you start with blocks you would have her actually pick up the block and drop it into a bucket as she counts so that she can not keep counting them. If it is something smaller she can hand them to you as she counts. As she gets better she would just move them to one side. Once you move on to representations of objects (pictures) you wild have her mark each object as she counts them with a marker or place a counter on them or similar.
I know there are also some simple ipad aps that will only let you count each item once and they will somehow identify the objects that have already been counted. It really needs to be clear which ones have been counted and which haven’t when you start out.