Something Ella is ahead in..

Much of the time, I discuss area's ella is behind in. Well, for once, I'd like to mention one she's ahead in.

Colors.

Ella has been obsessed with colors since she was around 24 months old. She's gone through phases of forcing us to work with her book of colors a dozen or more times a day, every day, for weeks straight. Around 27 months or so she started being somewhat accurate at picking out objects of a requested color, at least for red, blue, and green. (Ella, which ball is green? ) At the time, this was largely dismissed as highly unlikely by her special educator.

By 31 months, she could identify red, blue and green objects, and label them expressively with signs. ( Ella, what color is this? )

Ella is currently just under 34 months old, and she can reliably identify and label the colors: red, blue, green, and orange, and usually nails yellow too (sometimes she calls it orange). She can sign brown, but is a bit shaky on identifying objects as being brown. She can also reliably identify purple objects on request, but cannot form the sign.

As milestones go, they say most children should be able to label 1 color by 36 months. In the "what to expect the toddler years" book, identifying 4 colors is in the "may even be able to" section for 34-36 month olds. Ella's reliable with 5 colors, sometimes 6.

Is any of this really that unusual? No, not really. It just goes to show how much a child's interests impact their learning. Children generally learn a lot faster when they're really interested in something. Colors deeply fascinate Ella, so this isn't surprising.