He's Done It! Success With Double Digits

I feel like Jack and I have been working for a long time on understanding how to read double digits. I have a couple posts from earlier that explain my approach of using engines and coaches as an illustrative tool to help him remember what to read first. It seemed to get us half way there.

You know what did it? Jack's incredible desire to learn how to tell time. He has been on a mission for almost two months to figure out how to read time. His motivation? A really lame video game called "Monkey Ball" the children have become completely addicted to. Other than Grand Turismo, it is the only video game Jack and Grace have been given. They are allowed to play at 4:00pm for about an hour on a number of given days. So sad as it is, after school is over, it becomes a count down until 4:00pm. For Jack, this begins a constant game of "What time is it?". This game includes constantly running to the oven clock between activities to see how much time has passed between his activities that he finds to do (just to pass the time).

Miracle beyond miracles, this has trained his eye more than anything to read the digital clocks and get the double digits correct for the minutes. Today we played a game of "You name it, you get to keep it". He loves beating his mother at having more cards in his hand after a game is done than me. I did things a little differently this time, and laid out 9 cards in a box before him. He could only take a card if he could say it correctly - incorrectly and it was mommy's card. After three games of this, I had 5 cards, and Jack had the rest!

Joy! Joy! I was so proud of him. What was really telling, was for some cards that he had difficulty with he would point to the first number with his finger, or even trace it, as he tried to recall how to name his "engine" first.