Outside of the box thinking...

I know I've mentioned on my blog before some of my "hiccups" in the road with Ashton and helping him to learn his numbers and count to one hundred. I've tried so many things with him from manipulatives, to games, to flashcards...you name it.

One of the things that I overhead a friend talking about was creating Number Families. That they live in the same house, and each household has a "father"...all the other members of that household all look like their father by the first digit of their full name.

So I decided to build a street of our own where Ashton could create houses and the characters to go in them. We made the street, hung it on the wall, and we are slowly adding new construction :) with each new house we hang up along the way. Whenever we get to the #9 in whatever particular family, you have to go to the next house and meet the new father. One way I've told him to remember the father's names (20, 30, 40, etc...) is that starting at the age of 20 all fathers like to drink TEA (ie. 40 sounds like four-tea, 50 sounds like fifth-tea).

He still doesn't have it down to a science yet, but I can definitely see the wheels ticking and it has made it easier to conceptualize what mommy is talking about when you get to a 9 with each set of families...you always move one house up the road...changing the first number, which is the family name!