I love seeing his strategies

It always amazes me when I get a peek into how Ryder thinks. The past few days, I've gotten to see some of his counting strategies.
--At the airport, we were having Ryder read the gate signs with the letters and numbers on them. When he saw A4, instead of just reading it, he said A and then put up 4 fingers and counted them. Then he announced, "A4!" When I asked why he used his fingers, he told me that he forgot how many that number was, so he needed to count to figure out. Obviously, he knew that the number 4 corresponded to 4 fingers, but didn't remember that the name of the numeral was 4. Very good strategy to figure it out.
--Today while we were playing a board game with a spinner, he spun a 6. He then turned the spinner to 1, moved 1 space, turned the spinner to 2, moved another space, turned the spinner to 3, moved another space, on and on till he moved 6 spaces. Another interesting strategy to help himself keep track of the spaces.
What a smart guy to figure out all of these techniques to help himself.