The rhyme “One, Two, Three, Four, Five” is a well-known one. Before acting it out, first teach the words: a fish, a finger and a little finger.
Practice counting from 1 to 10.
Act out the rhyme. Take a toy fish. Run around the room and “catch” it. Exclaim: I’ve caught the fish! act out the fish biting you. Drop the fish and say: I let it go. It bit my finger! It bit my little finger!
Say the rhyme acting it out:
One, two, three, four, five.
Once I caught a fish alive,
Six, seven, eight, nine ,ten,
Then I let it go again.
Why did you let it go?
Because it bit my finger so.
Which finger did it bite?
This little finger on the right.
You should know
– The rhythm and rhyme help your baby develop the sense of her mother tongue and prepare her for reading and writing.
– The activity helps develop your baby’s imagination and drama.
– Counting or other aspects of mathematics are inherent in most situations in life. So, help your child develop them e.g. in cooking, walking or on other situations.
– It’s important that you understand how much your child is capable of doing.
– Infants can count from birth. It’s an excellent activity to re-create the Glenn Doman cards with red dots at home and work systematically with them. The dots are from 1 to 100, so your baby can learn counting, numbers, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division with them.
Counting in your native language involves two different learning skills:
- Name value – your child learns that 145 is one hundred forty five and not one four and five (as it can be in other cultures).
- Your child learns place value – that 145 is composed of smaller numbers.