We discovered a month and a half ago that Sal could count on his own. Sal’s aunt told us - telling Sal he had to count to 5 before she’d help him jump off the little ledge area. We then found out from Sal’s nanny that he’s been counting for longer. It never occurred to us to ask Sal to count on his own. One of those moments where you really feel out of it as a parent. She had recorded Sal counting to 10 for her kids since it was cute to hear Sal alternately whisper and shout the different numbers.
In any case - counting has been an interesting adventure. It looks like it will be an ongoing process. Besides sesame street - we began counting w/ Sal when we discovered his love of playing hide and seek (and cheating while playing hide and seek… but that’s a different story). We’d have Sal cover his eyes, then have him repeat the numbers. He loved playing hide and seek over and over even though we probably only have about 6 hiding places that we’d hide in. Counting was really just a rote set of words he could string together.
Since then Sal’s taken to counting things - but he’s been starting to leave out numbers. The five was the first to go - then 6. Sometimes he even skips the 4. Seven, eight, nine and ten are strong finishers for him. His one to one correspondence is solid to 3, and sometimes higher, sometimes not. We’re trying to re-introduce 5 by having him count to 5 if he wants to do little fly-jumps while holding his hands. He’s stubborn though about not wanting to include the 5… We’ve read it’s pretty common in kids to start omitting numbers. He does like to count things and finish it with a hearty “ah ah ah!” a la the count from sesame street.
Number recognition was not something we were that into introducing to Sal but we found out a couple months ago that Sal could recognize the numbers. Looking at his dad’s t-shirt he read off the “K2″. It’s funny how much Sal loves looking at his dad’s t-shirts, and even his own clothing. Made me even think that it’d be a good little business selling mom and dad shirts with things that their kids will enjoy to look at and later read. When Sal was a baby - he loved a shirt that had a Yahoo! smiley on it. Simple - but very compelling to his little baby mind. We found out later that the nanny does little number games with him - like helping her put together the letter/number kitchen mat, allowing him to hit the microwave buttons if he pushes the right numbers, using the little golf kit and asking him to pull out particular holes from the bag that we stored the kit from. Something else I’ve recently discovered is that Sal enjoys it when I take the big foam numbers and letters and have them talk to him on what they are - like grabbing the A and making it dance in front of him - and saying “I’m the A! I say “AHHHH!” and having it run away. He’ll copy these little games as well.

We’re trying to slow play his number knowledge - bringing it up when he seems interested, stopping when he’s lost interest, figuring out what motivates him like games like hide and seek and having him count off before we fly him up in the air. He seems to learn things on his own terms - and we think that’s the way it should be. He’s surprised us up to now with what he’s picked up by this - no reason to stop this now.