Pre-schooler fascinated by numbers

[BlueberryPancake]

I have posted a few times here about my 2 year old who has a speech delay. But there is also something else I would like your opinion about.

We read many posts here about teaching pre-schoolers to read. But my 2 year old (3 next month) is very, very advanced in his knowledge and interest in numbers.

When a baby, he would point at page numbers instead of images when reading him a book. His favorite books were with numbers (One Wriggly Eartworm...). Then as soon as he could point he would point at numberplates on cars and point directly at the numbers, not at the letters. He has been able to identify numbers 1 to 10 since before he was 18 months. Now at nearly 3 his favorite thing is to point at and say door numbers (double digits) and he started identifying and saying three-digit numbers.

His mind seems to be 'wired' for numbers. If we play a game, he can throw two dice and instantly say 'seven' if it's a three and a four. He doens't count the spots on the dice. We can ask him 'If you have three apples in a bag, and put another five, how many apples are in a bag?' and he gets the answer without counting.

He knows and loves playing with shapes, and is very good at puzzles.

Today, we were doing playdoh and he would constantly try to make shapes in the form of a number and then say it outloud. I didn't encourage him to do this at all.

I know that some parents, when their child shows a clear interest in letters and words, they wonder about teaching them to read before they go to school. But I've never really heard about a child who is 'wired' with so much interest in numbers.

Also, my mother in law, who is very musical, says that he already recognises many notes on her piano and she is convinced that he will be musical (something that runs in DH's family).

Last example. The other week, DH asked our son if he could write anything (he was 'drawing' on a white board). DS thought for a minute, and said 'yes' and he wrote number 7 on the board. And then he drew a 3, and a few other numbers. Completely without 'coaching'.

What should we do, if anything? Is this very unusual? Do you know/have kids who have that kind of interest? Thanks for your advice

I would just encourage it with lots of board/card games. ICT games has lots of fun things to play.

Blueberry I don't know anything particular about this but I would say that's great and certainly he sounds advanced.

Can he count things (ie if you have 9 apples, can he count them accurately). Counting 10 objects is a target for FS2, which is why I ask.

DD used to have a little friend (some years ago) whose speech was a bit slow (compared to her anyway!) but I still recall walking along the road with the 2 of them and he could tell me what all the numbers were on the doors (DD had no idea). This was a child whose vocab otherwise consisted of "train" "mama" and "Dada" pretty much. I wonder if there's a connection (ie poor at words but good at numbers?) I certainly remember being amazed. The DC were about 2 or nearly 3 I would say.

(BTW child will now be 8 but I have no idea how he is doing now wrt numbers, sorry).

yes he can count objects up to ten accuratly. I was chopping tomatoes earlier and he started counting them - it's a pack with five on one side, and five on the other side, and he counted 1-2-3-4-5 and looked at the other side and said '10'!

I have the Usborne Parent's Guide to Help Your Child Learn Number Skills which I found useful when mine were small here on Amazon There may be something more up to date now. It had lots of suggestions.

Hi there,
Not sure if I have any advice for you, but just wanted to say that my DS is similar in some ways. He's 2.6, and can do some though not all of what you describe. I don't think he could do the dice thing (though he enjoys throwing a single die and telling you what it says), and he certainly can't add up in his head, but he can count up to over 100 accurately and correctly identify 2 and 3 digit numbers, and he does seem to have the concept of addition (he likes asking what 12 plus 12 makes, for example, even if he couldn't tell you himself). He also loves shapes and puzzles, especially jigsaws. His latest favourite thing is clocks - he can tell the time on an old-fashioned clock as long as it's just a whole 'o'clock', and he can tell any time from a digital clock. Not sure if he could draw a number (I might have to ask him tomorrow ), but he certainly looks out for numbers a lot - he points out page numbers when reading, or on front doors when we go for a walk, or even in random shapes (e.g. 'that stick looks like a number 7, mummy'). The difference, perhaps, is that he is also very into letters and is relatively advanced in speech (he knows his alphabet, can recognise all letters both upper and lower case, and can spell words up to 4 or 5 letters long). Sorry, I don't say that to sound smug, simply that I don't think one skill/interest necessarily precludes another - I'm sure your DS will move onto letters and speech soon enough .

Actually, my personal theory is that my DS is not necessarily 'wired' for numbers, as you put it - I think it's more that he's extremely visual and observant (like his father, incidentally), and for that reason both letters and numbers please him, because he likes being able to recognise and 'play' with them. I find his visual memory extraordinary (maybe because mine is crap ), but I don't actually know whether it's unusual - maybe it's just that he for some reason displays it more obviously than most other children his age.

Sorry, I'm just rambling, really. But hope it helps - you're not alone!!

He does recognise some letters but it's not unusual, it's because I do them with his older brother. I took him once to a local antique shop (just to have a look around) and he was absolutely fascinated by the clocks. The bloke opened a few clocks to show ds the mechanism and he was so excited, like being in a sweet shop.

I don't know about being "wired" for numbers, but my 3.5 year old is much more interested in numbers than letters. It's something we're really encouraging as for me it is logically the first step. Numbers, after all, have a real relationship to the world around us. Letters are a much more abstract concept - symbols representing sounds - and I believe much harder to grasp. DS has very little interest in letters just now and I'm not pushing it at all.

As for numbers, he can easily count 10 objects accurately, he can now do simple adding and taking away as well and is starting to grasp multiples of ten. All from taking real world examples on an ad hoc basis whenever he's interested. I'd always assumed this must be quite normal for his age, but the curriculum for 5+ year olds has such low expectations I'm now not so sure.

I think number skills are badly underrated and lose out to "literacy" at every turn, so I'd urge you to do everything you can to encourage the interest while you can.

Hi Blueberry, My DS is now nearly 14 and still recognised as gifted with numbers. We have always tried to broaden his interests and knowledge rather than focus on the numbers, if that makes sense. He would have been like your DS in the clock shop! I tended to ask why or how he thought something might work or for example if he had seen a number whether he could remember that number somewhere else, or who did he know who could be that age.
We have fed him with all sorts of information over the years - his favourite book used to be a DK children's encyclopedia - and he is now (embarrassingly) at the top of his year for almost every subject. We think about the skills he will need in order to make a useful contribution when he gets to university & work & encourage him to try new things. The difficulty with a bright child is that they don't know how to struggle to do something so he's not very patient!
Bit long winded, sorry, but hope it helps and gives you a long term view.......