Giggles, Geetle and I visited Pookie’s classroom the other day.  During free play time, I asked the teacher how Pookie was doing with his his one-to-one association when counting.  At home, he gets lazy and rushes thru the counting, not touching each item and slurring the numbers together, as if he is in too big of a hurry to count the items correctly.  I wondered how he did at school.  She said she had been meaning to talk to me about that very issue.  She has been testing Pookie for kindergarten readiness and has determined that he can only “count” up to 4.

4?

I was confused, and I told her so.  He counts over 100.  He understands the sequence of numbers and knows that it goes “29, 30, 31, etc”.   He recognizes the numbers in print too.  She said she was fooled at first too.  But that when she asks him to count, he shows no concept of numbers over 4.  No concept of “how many”, over 4.    All his counting, she said, is just rote phrases.  (another ASD thing).   He can repeat the sequence of numbers, but does not know what they mean.  I was skeptical, but nodded along.  I said that maybe I was fooled too and that I would pay greater attention  at home and see.

Well, today I tried many different ways of getting him to count and think about quantities.

• I asked for 7 high fives…and got them.
• I asked him to give me 5 markers…and he did.
• I asked him to count pretzels…and he did…all 22 of them.

That proves he can “count” higher than 4, right?  How do I know if he really understands or if its rote?  Do I care?  We have this same problem with reading too.  He can “read” some books all by himself.  But I know that he just has the words memorized.  For example, he can read “No David” and “David gets in Trouble” by David Shannon.   There is alot of simple repetition in these books; once you know the words, they are easy to read.  So Pookie “reads” them every day.  But that’s not really “reading” right?  Or is it?  If I take some of the common words in these books and write them on blank paper, making sentences not found in the original book, Pookie can read them.  But he knows what “No” and “David” and “School” look like in print, so he is cheating, right?  Or maybe not.  Studies have shown that the majority of our reading is actually done by glancing at the word and making a quick guess at it, usually a correct one.  Pookie does the same.  He will guess at a new word, saying something else that starts with the same letter.  Sure, its guessing but is that wrong?  I think that is still pre-reading.

As far as his counting skills go.  I believe he does understand the concept of numbers and quantity.  Maybe Pookie heard that the teacher was not willing to send him to Summer School, so he decided to dumb it up a bit at school.  See, he wants to go to Summer School too.