Counting

James is learning new things every day.  He has recently made leaps and bounds of progress on his letters and numbers.  He now recognizes all his letters and has started associating sounds with about 1/3 of them.  He also can count things pretty reliably up to 20 (although he still skips 15 off and on).  

Within the last month or so he basically taught himself to recognize the digits 1 through 9 using the laptop toy he got for Christmas a couple years ago (thanks again Grandma and Grandpa Peterson!).  He was trying to answer questions about how many of various shapes were on the screen.  He would count them (correctly) but then he didn't know how to find the number to press on the keyboard.  I showed him that the numbers were in green along the top row of the keyboard, and demonstrated that if he started counting from the left from 1, he could find the number he was looking for.  I really only showed him this a couple times before he got the hang of it.  After that, it was only a matter of days before he connected the number with it's corresponding digit.  I had no idea he knew his numbers until one day he pointed a number out correctly on one of his toys.  I started quizzing him on them, and he got them all right!  He is one incredible boy, and he amazes us every day.

Here's a video of James doing some counting:

The SD card on the camera filled up right in the middle, so I had to take a break and clear it off before I could finish.  Here's the second part where he identifies his numbers even when they are out of order:

Next, I'll try and get a video of him showing his letters and their sounds. :)  I realized it has been a while since I updated the blog about this type of thing, and I want to fix that!