Our story
It started with one word at a time
Count & Do series began at home, with a mother and a daughter and a lot of moving around the living room.
A rhyme, then a song, then a book
I was trying to teach my young daughter movement words. Walk. Jump. Spin. The words themselves were simple, but saying them out loud was not landing. So I did what a lot of parents do without thinking about it - I turned them into a rhyme.
The rhyme became a song. The song became something we did every day, and the words started to stick. Not because we were practicing, but because we were playing. She would hear the tune and she would already be moving.
Once I saw how well it worked, I went looking for books that did the same thing. I found beautiful counting books and beautiful first-word books, but I could not find a series built specifically around action verbs - the words a child actually needs in order to say what they want to do. That gap is why Count & Do series exists.
Why action verbs
Action verbs are the foundation of early communication. They are how a toddler moves from naming things to making sentences - from "ball" to "throw the ball." Give a small child ten strong verbs and you have given them something they can build with.
So each book in the series takes a single joyful journey and lines it with verbs. In Run, Run, Run!, that journey runs from a first careful Walk all the way to a full, delighted Run, with a number attached to every step so children are counting from 1 to 10 as they go.
The moment it clicked
A friend in Costa Rica shared the book with her children. They were not native English speakers. After only a few times through the song and the book, they understood all ten words.
That told me something I had not fully appreciated about what we had made. Movement and melody do not need translating. A child can watch you hop, hear the word, and connect the two without a single sentence of explanation in between. Bilingual and ESL families are not a side audience for these books - they are right at the center of who they are for.
What we make
Count & Do series books are built on three things: movement, repetition, and song. They are meant to be read standing up, sung badly, and asked for again immediately. If your toddler ends up out of breath, the book is working.