My daughter, who is approaching 3, seems to be very interested in counting particularly at the moment. She will count how many bricks she has or how many pieces of orange she has eaten and then how many is left. This seems incredibly early to be interested in numbers and their formation, however she is, and so I’m going with it! She’s also quite interested by the shape of letters and words. She can recognise the shapes of her name fairly easily. This by the way has had no prompting from me or anyone else, it seems to have come naturally to her. My question is, do I just go with the flow and watch her counting things or should I have a bit more input? We’re not planning to follow any sort of curriculum at any stage so it is likely to be a more autonomous environment anyway- just thought I’d get some thoughts from you guys x

Go with the flow!  If her brain is saying ‘I want to learn this’ then it’s ready to learn.  My daughter is 3 1/2 and knows her own name but isn’t really interested in any other words yet.  She does like numbers though, so we do some counting.

Grace did exactly the same - she’s now 3.5. One of her favourite games is to count pencils - so over dinner we slap down a bunch of pencils, she guesses how many are there and then counts to see if she is right or wrong. Then we add some or take some away and repeat the process. Then we ask her if her guess was right or wrong - with no judgement attached; for us the idea of testing a hypothesis is important, it doesn’t matter wherever the hypothesis turns out to be correct. My husband once told her that the process was called “testing a hypothesis”, so now she says “My hi-pot-assist” was right/wrong”, which is just so cute!

Personally, I think as long as they feel it’s a game and is good fun, I’m going to go with it - I don’t really understand the concept of actively holding a child *back* from learning as our local Steiner school does - that feels as bad to me as hothousing :( .

Angie

Angie that’s exactly how I feel. There is a lot that can be taken from steiner education but there is also a lot that I think is nonsense. Holding a child back is as bad as pushing them too far and surely they know what’s interesting and best for them at each given stage. X

I would go with it too.  In a few weeks time she may have moved onto another area of interest and return to the numbers later.  My eldest was like that at this age but my youngest has no interest, we are all different!

Alice was 4 in March, she has also started showing an interest in numbers and also asked me to help her write, we got some wall charts with pictures on them (she chose them) for counting and the alphabet so she could see numbers and letters at her level.  She used to like tracing them and still loves counting them and saying the alphabet out loud.

She asked for more and we found workbooks she liked the look of in the poundshop
sarie

i’d be amazed if you could find a way to stop her reading if she wants to!- Emily started “reading” at 3 1/2, and had a reading age of 9 when she was 4 1/2(they tested her at reception class at school as they couldn’t work out what to do with her!), totally self-lead, it’s just the way she is; Tomas, who has just turned 6, however has no interest and is only just starting to sound out words (with a lot of help from me or Emily) and is still struggling with his numbers too, fortunatly as they are both home ed now there is no pressure on him so he’ll work it out at his own pace.
Must say, having a child who can read early is a huge help though so I certainly wouldn’t hold her back (adding things to the shopping list, sorting out the computer, taking a message on the phone, reading road names if I was trying to find somewhere….!)
Gill
x

Just go with it and let her enjoy exploring the world around her, how fascinating it must be to be 3 and seeing all these things written down everywhere you go and wonder what are they? That’s what I always thought when my dd had similar early interest in these things, amazing everyone with her abilities to read before she was 4 and reading books comfortably soon afterwards. Numbers were a fascination too, counting and recognising them up to and past 100 at an early age was a joy to watch.

Natural learning is something to behold, watching those moments of joy when they “get” something all on their own. My daughter is in school rather than HE, but her learning is very natural, very self-led and wholesome.