Point + Shoot recognising the numbers!

It’s been a really long time since I have participated in snowingindoors blog linky. Life has taken over a bit the passed few months and as many of you know 2.5 years old do absorb a lot of our time! So hereby my apology for the silence! Our toddler, now 32 months, has been interested in numbers, counts really well, but we found it increasingly difficult to teach number recognition!

Obviously we do everything we advocate (read our Using Play for Number Skills), but we even though she wanted to, she would always say the numbers wrong! well no anymore – we had a huge milestone I want to share the secret.

Today was Daddy’s birthday, and chloe has asked all week if we could bake him a cake. Daddy wanted a malteser cake which I made 2 years ago, but I noticed baking supplies got lost in our move. So after making our shopping list, chloe was eager to get our ‘recipe’. She probably meant ingredients for the recipe. We started our day with a trip to Lakeland got cake shapes for 3 tiers (I am always overly ambitious), etc. Chloe was really motivated to make the cake, was patient with measuring every step and super helpful, she did awesome stirring and it was such a joyful day! A warm welcome as the passed 2 weeks were compiled of toddler breakdowns and tantrums where cuddles or distractions did not help and each lasted minimum 1-2 hours and often through the night.

We finished cake for each of the tiers, and then melting chocolate and poor it into our Lakeland number shapes! Suprise surprise each number I was pooring into she named correctly! I purposefully mixed up the order of pooring, but no, no fooling, she does know all her numbers exactly (even upside down)! After the numbers had cooled down I offered her to guess the number I was showing and if it was correct she could eat it! If the motivation is big enough…!

We were cooking together all afternoon and really enjoyed our time together. The result of the cakes is really not presentable (as below), but I loved how me and her did it together.

I loved seeing how much she has grown with her motorskills moulding noses and hair for our icing  and her understanding of things. When stirring or opening the malteser bag she did not want to eat any. She was determined that all is for Daddy his cake and that it was really important. Only after all the maltesers we were capable of sticking on it, were on, she dare to ask if she was allowed to eat any.  Based on the passed weeks she would have had a meltdown for not getting anything straight away….

She developed a sense of humor and found it hilarious that I made her icing face with a chocolaty mouth. Very relieved and happy mommy tonight! Did you go through periods where the toddler tantrums were more extreme and difficult for a couple of weeks?

And last but not least: Happy Birthday Daddy! You are 32+1 (as melting + cooling two chocolate 3’s would have taken a day longer! )