ETC: Ten Little Ladybugs

In my earlier post about The Elephant Alphabet Book, I talked about the importance of having an ABC book to read to your kids. Reading is a fundamental skill and the ABC's, the letters and their sounds, are the foundation of that. Another fundamental skill is counting. Counting is different though, because at it's most basic level, it's real in a way that reading isn't. Letters and the sounds they make are abstract, they differ across languages, they're almost arbitrary. Numbers on the other hand, are real. Sure, we use different names for them in different languages, but two of something is two of something whether you're speaking English or French or Mandarin. Because counting and numbers are more real, more a part of our physical world, learning to count is different. Like I said before, two is two. There are two of them, you can see them, you can touch them, there are physically two. Now add one, and you have three, and they're physically different than two. Counting is tactility different than reading. For that reason I recommend counting books that are tactile, books where you can physically touch the objects you're counting. I don't have a specific recommendation as I don't think the particular book matters. We have had Ten Little Ladybugs by Melanie Gerth for all of our kids and it has worked well. Every page has a different number of little plastic ladybugs glued to it. The story starts with 10, and you lose one with each page flip. On each page you can touch the little bumpy ladybugs and count them, one, two, three....
There are lots of different ways to teach counting and all of them are important. A number book with physical tactile things to count might be something to add to the arsenal.