55.

the other night, we did letter work in ek's room after hollis went to bed.  she is really starting to recognize letters (though the only ones we have are lower case, which are way harder and not what she's accustomed to at school) and she is quite good at giving the starting sound and then telling us examples of what else starts with that.  in montessori, they learn the alphabet, but when they're learning letters for practical use at this age, they learn them as sounds.  so, T is learned as ta (the sound it makes in the word) instead of as tee.  and so on.

anyway...when it was time to pick up, i held open the bag and had her count all the letters as she was putting them back in (hoping it would motivate her to do it without too much complaint).  i figured we'd get to 15 or 18 and then just start over.  but she just kept right on going.  for all 55 letters.  she needed a little help here and there (she has a tendency to skip the 7s - 27, 37, etc, and she wasn't quite sure about 40), but she TOTALLY got it.

i love watching new things click into place in her brain.  and i am so amazed at how she learns and how i can not think about counting for a few weeks and she's more than halfway to 100.