Shapes, colors, letters, oh my!

I thought I would share the things we're using to teach Mary these things in case any other mamas out there want to try them.

Mary knows all of her basic shapes and points them out regularly. I attribute this mostly to the baby Einstein discovering shapes DVD. They do a good job of saying the shape name a lot. And it helped when I sat down and watched it with her and said, "Say rectangle!" When I realized she was getting it I got her this shapes puzzle by Melissa and Doug which was such a great learning tool. I would take all the shapes out and "hide" them in my lap. Then I'd count to three and pull one out. She usually laughed at that...not sure why:) But then I'd say the name of the shape and have her say it. It took her a while to tell the difference between circle and oval, and rectangle and square, but now she can tell them apart.

For colors we mostly just name the colors of things around us. But this stacker is SOOOOOO good for helping her with colors. We just started talking about colors last week and already she can name most of the seven basic colors (think ROY G. BIV). This stacker has all those colors and I also think it's good for her development otherwise. She's just getting to the point where she can stack them in order and when she gets it wrong she knows. She'll take them off and put them in the right order. For this I just have her name the colors as she's putting them on the peg. We also now name random colors of things around the house.

Letters...she's not great at them. But she does know a few by sight and she can sing the ABC's. Which apparently is all you have to be able to do going into kindergarten. I feel like you should be able to do more than that by the time you're 5, but that's just me. Anyway, I really like this DVD by leap frog. It does a great job making the letter sounds, it's fun, and there's nothing in it that I wouldn't want Mary to see. We also visit starfall, have flashcards, and use this puzzle (thanks mom!). I try to work on one letter at a time, but she also sees a lot of other letters because of the video and puzzles. It's a work in progress:) She's been getting a show almost every day now because it's so cold I don't even step outside most days. This bugged me at first, but I know once it gets warm we'll be running around outside during that time instead!

As for numbers, we just count as we're doing things. Once she could count to 3 I just started working her up. She can make it to 10 now. Three is easy because we're always counting to three. Like when doing puzzles, jumping, etc. We have the chunky puzzle that is similar to the letters one above, but haven't started using it yet. I'd like her to know her letters before we conquer numbers. For now just being able to count out loud is sufficient for me. Hope this helps some of you working with your little ones!