Counting to Five

Learning to count, Emmett first could only count two objects accurately. Lately I've noticed that he can do three, so I wondered if he could do more. Although he typically gets two jelly beans as a treat, I decided to put five in my hand and told him he could have them all if he could tell me how many there were. He looked down, and without pointing to them one-by-one and counting them out, he said "Five."

Startled, I asked him to wait a minute, and returned with nine jelly beans in a line. This time he did count them one by one. He did it right most of the way, but at the end his pointing and counting got out of synch, so he thought there were eight. I gave him all of the jelly beans anyway. So he can accurately count somewhere between five and nine items at a time.