When I was pre-school age the official educational line was that parents should not attempt to teach their children the three Rs before they started school at 5 - the poor little things might be confused if the teacher used different methods
I did have a notebook & a pencil however in which I liked to do my 'writing' - imitating the weekly letter-writing rituals of the grown ups
One day my mother saw that there were recognisable numerals among the random scrawls. When she asked me who had taught me to do that, I replied that I had copied them from the clock
Or so she used to like to tell me
