the pleasure of a number line

I am a nerd. Geek. People that know me, know this. I was teased in school because I was a nerd, complete with glasses & braces (& a terribly nerdy fringe...). At school, my big 'am naturally quite good at' thing was maths. To the extent that I studied it at uni.

So what has this little series of tidbits about me got to do with, well, anything? Well, yesterday something beautiful happened that tied my geeky self to my mummy self to my budding natural parenting self to my mad-keen-on-all-things-Montessori self. My son - my exuberant, energy-bunny, bouncy & mad-as-a-hatter son - chose to pick up a stacking block with a 6 on it & say "Mummy, the number SIX! Number SIX!"

Six is his favourite number, you may have guessed. But this (although it is making me happy just thinking it) is not where the magical bit was yesterday afternoon. Nope. The magic happened when I pointed out the sandpaper numbers on the shelf. We took them out of their little wooden box and we lined them up - from 0 to 9. We named each one, Teddy rapt up in the line the tiles made on the floor. We got out the stacking blocks & matched the numbers. We took out his wooden clock, an amazing shape puzzle/toy clock and added those numbers to our line. We did the shape puzzle clock & put it back on the shelf.

At this point, Teddy was still caught up in the wonder of numbers. Of sequence. My heart was singing. I had to duck into the kitchen to put together dinner. I noticed Teddy start picking up & moving the number tiles, roughly stacking them into a pile a bit further away from where we had been working. "He's done" I thought, pleased that our exercise had lasted as long as it had. I turned back toward the stove & continued dinner.

I heard the thud of racing feet bounding toward me. I braced myself for the 2-year-old body slam into my legs, lucky I had as otherwise I probably would have burnt myself when it came! I glanced down & Ted beamed up at me "I DID IT. Fin-ushed!" I let him lead me proudly over to his number line. Yep. Tiny Ted had been busy lining the stack of sandpaper numbers ever-so-carefully & neatly back into a straight line across the floor.

So they weren't in order, or indeed all the correct way up. We had fun with that, picking each number up & naming it. Lining them up again. My math nerd / mummy / Montessori enthusiast / wish-I-could-home-school selves were aligned in perfect, heart-singing harmony.

The wonder of numbers. Counting has been happening at our place for some time now but this was the first time it all molded into one beautiful 30+ minutes of activity. It was actually probably longer, but I was so wrapped up in Teddy being wrapped up that I didn't notice the time.

Numbers. Teddy & numbers. Bliss.