Friday Post - Number Train

These are pretty standard.  I got it for all of $2 at the thrift store.  This one is Melissa and Doug.  It looks like a square puzzle on the board, but it's just one long train with 20 cars and an engine.

It's been brilliant.  When we first got it, my daughter could count to 12 by rote, and didn't quite understand what she was doing.  She casually worked at it for about two weeks and then, finally, something snapped and she knew how to put it together herself.  Not only that, she loves to sit on the couch with the box and point to each train, counting to 20 out loud.  Shortly after, something else snapped and she was reading double digits all the way to 99.

There's still something missing; she obviously doesn't fully understand how numbers work because she's still a bit confused about the concept of relative differences in size, but this puzzle really helped her visualize what she's doing when she's counting.  I'm so glad we came across it.