Counting, Colours, Courtesy, Contralto

Over the past month or so, Sophia has really started to take off on a few skills we have been working on. One of them is not toilet training - we've given that a pass for a little while till the baby is born, since a relapse at that point is likely anyway and we don't want to put too much pressure on her. Plus, I couldn't think of a way to describe that particular activity that starts with a "C". So here, in no particular order, are Sophia's Top-four new skills that start with "C"!

Counting

Sophia's early attempts at counting were based on our counting to her, and that usually went "one-two-THREEEEEEEE" when we were swinging, or "THAT'S ONE" ... "THAT'S TWO" when she's misbehaving. Either way, three is as high as we go, and we always started her off with "waaaaaaaan" which she completed with "toooo, FWEEEEEEE". Little did we realize that this method of counting could produce a hiccup in her development: she believes that counting begins at two, with "one" as a prompt to count. She somehow also knows that "one" is a number, so when we tell her to count to three, she invariably counts "two, one, FWEEEEEE."

She added "four" to her repertoire a while ago, then a little later, it was "five", then she could go to seven, and then to eight. After eight came seven for a while but quite recently, she has made a sudden jump allowing her to count all the way to fourteen in one run! she now counts that high reliably, but gets confused when she is counting her fingers. She doesn't actually check off each finger as she goes, but she does more or less get to five for one hand, and more or less to ten for the other hand, but then she doesn't know where to go with her remaining four numbers. Toes work, but then she gets distracted with doing "this little piggy" to herself. It goes something like this:

"This one piggy market;
this one piggy market;
this one piggy WEE WEE WEE WEE home"

Not bad, really, but her command of poem and song lyrics will be detailed later in this post.

Colours

We have been trying to teach her colours for months now. We use coloured markers when she is drawing, we use coloured shapes, we used blocks (only four colours but still usually wrong) and any time there is something with a bold colour on it (a jacket, a shirt, a sign, a bird, a tree, whatever) we ask "what colour is that, Sophia?" and she would usually answer "Green!" which was usually wrong (except when we were outside - surprising how many things are green). I was starting to thing she might have a vision problem - she had all the names for colours: she could say red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, black, brown; but she was never saying them in the correct context. Well, a little while ago, it all fell into place. Suddenly. She was drawing on her whiteboard downstairs with her dry-erase non-toxic markers (the best things in the world, btw) and she popped open a marker and said "Purple!" (actually it's more like "poopoo" but you get the idea). And since she was usually wrong, I didn't make much of it, till I looked over at the board and discovered that she was, in fact, using the purple marker. She put it down and picked up the red one.

"What colour is that marker, Sophia?"
"Red!"
"and this one?"
"Ornj!"

Amazing. So now she has all of her primary colours (the ones I listed before). All we have to do is start working on Puce, Cyan, Magenta, and Aquamarine. And goldenrod and canary and salmon, if we want her to work in an office, I guess.

Courtesy

We have also been trying to teach Sophia to be polite. And as with the rest of these things, she probably doesn't quite get it, but we are somewhat successful in behavioral modification to make her say "please" and "thank you" and "excuse me". The real trick is getting her to say it unprompted. "Please" and "excuse me" still usually need a "What do you say..." prompt, but "thank you" is another matter.

("excuse me" is for burps and farts. Just so's you know. And Grandma: Yes, we actually wrote FART in this blog. HA)

She learned to say "thank you" about the same time she learned to say "please" and "excuse me," but there was a complication: with "please" and "excuse me", she got praise when she did it. So she'd say "please" and we'd say "good girl". Classic conditioning, and it worked (to an extent). With "thank you", however, protocol destroyed our teaching. We would say "what do you say" when giving her something. She'd say "Thank you" and we'd say "You're welcome" instead of "good girl". Now she hears this and thinks "oh, I must have forgotten something and they are correcting me"

Now, when we give her something, she says "Thank you welcome".

We've almost trained that out of her, and in the process have spent more time and attention on "thank you" than the other ones. Don't know if that's why, but she now spontaneously says "thank you" after receiving something. Without prompting. And, for the most part, without "you're welcome" added on.

Contralto

Sophia can sing. Not only that, she knows the words. Lots of words. To lots of songs. She's been singing along with songs in the car, but we didn't know how much of the songs she knows until we tried her without the song playing. For example, we sing "twinkle twinkle little star" with her every night as she is brushing her teeth. Well one night not too long ago, she started brushing her teeth, and I went away for a second to get something, and I heard her singing:

"twinkle star, wonder what you are, up above sky, diamond inna sky"

Which is pretty close. I mean that was all without prompting, and pretty musical.

She also knows her ABC song from start to finish, including the "now I know my ABCs" part. Sure, she skips 15 or 20 letters in the middle, but she GETS IT. Plus, although her melody isn't great when she is singing (more or less all over the place but it's DEFINITELY SINGING), she knows tunes. She knows that "Twinkle twinkle" and "ABCs" are the same tune, and she switches back and forth between them

Here is a list of songs for which she only needs minimal prompting to sing along with most if not all of the lyrics:

Twinkle Twinkle little star
ABCs
Teddy Bear's Picnic
12 little monkeys jumping on the bed
5 little ducks went out to play
the wheels on the bus
(more kids songs like that, I'm sure)

and the ENTIRE barenaked ladies kids CD.

We listen to that CD in the car all the time, and it's absolutely priceless to hear her sing along from the back seat. She misses words, and tunes, and rhythms, but she is ready with the first words of the next song before it has even begun.

And as for contralto? it's probably too early to tell, really, but it's the best C-word for singing I could find.

Proof of Sophia's singing ability




Transcript:
D - Monkeys
S - Jumpin on monkeys... (oh look... I can dance!)
D - 5 little monkeys
D&S - jumpin on the bed
D - One...
S - One (oh, are we counting?)
D - one fell off
S - and bonky head!
D - momma called
S - doctor said: "no more monkeys jumpin on..." (Oooh. carpet... lemme walk over here)

Samples of "teddy bear's picnic"





and the inspiration...