3-4 YEAR-OLD
SUNFLOWER MILESTONES
PERSONAL, SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
- Can play in a group, extending and elaborating play ideas, e.g. building up a roleplay activity with other children.
- Initiates play, offering cues to peers to join them.
- Keeps play going by responding to what others are saying or doing.
- Demonstrates friendly behaviour, initiating conversations and forming good relationships with peers and familiar adults
- Welcomes and values praise for what they have done.
- Enjoys responsibility of carrying out small tasks.
- Is more outgoing towards unfamiliar people and more confident in new social situations.
- Showing confidence in asking adults for help.
- Begins to accept the needs of others and can take turns and share resources, sometimes with support from others.
- Can usually tolerate delay when needs are not immediately met, and understands wishes may not always be met.
- Can usually adapt behaviour to diƙerent events, social situations and changes in routine.
COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE
- Listens with interest to the noises adults make when they read stories.
- Recognises and responds to many familiar sounds, e.g. turning to a knock on the door, looking at or going to the door.
- Shows interest in play with sounds, songs and rhymes
- Listens to stories with increasing attention and recall.
- Joins in with repeated refrains and anticipates key events and phrases in rhymes and stories.
- Focusing attention – still listen or do, but can shift own attention.
- Is able to follow directions (if not intently focused on own choice of activity).
- Developing understanding of simple concepts (e.g. big/little).
- Understands use of objects (e.g. “What do we use to cut things?’).
- Beginning to understand ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions.
- Uses a variety of questions (e.g. what, where, who).
- Uses simple sentences (e.g.’ Mummy gonna work.’)
- Uses talk to connect ideas, explain what is happening and anticipate what might happen next, recall and relive past experiences.
- Questions why things happen and gives explanations. Asks e.g. who, what, when, how
Literacy
- Fills in the missing word or phrase in a known rhyme, story or game, e.g. ‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a …’.
- Suggests how the story might end.
- Listens to stories with increasing attention and recall.
- Describes main story settings, events and principal characters.
- Shows interest in illustrations and print in books and print in the environment.
- Looks at books independently.
- Holds books the correct way up and turns pages.
EARLY YEAR’S MATH
- Selects a small number of objects from a group when asked, for example, ‘please give me one’, ‘please give me two’.
- Recites some number names in sequence.
- Uses some language of quantities, such as ‘more’ and ‘a lot’.
- Knows that a group of things changes in quantity when something is added or taken away.
- Recites numbers in order to 10.
- Realizes not only objects, but anything can be counted, including steps, claps or jumps.
- Understands some talk about immediate past and future, e.g. ‘before’, ‘later’ or ‘soon’.
- Anticipates specific time-based events such as mealtimes or home time.
- Beginning to talk about the shapes of everyday objects, e.g. ’round’ and ‘tall’.
UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD
- Has a sense of own immediate family and relations.
- In pretend play, imitates everyday actions and events from own family and cultural background, e.g. making and drinking tea.
- Knows some of the things that make them unique, and can talk about some of the similarities and diƙerences in relation to friends or family
- Shows care and concern for living things and the environment.
EXPRESSIVE ART
- Joins in singing favourite songs.
- Shows an interest in the way musical instruments sound.
- Explores and learns how sounds can be changed.
- Explores colour and how colours can be changed.
- Developing preferences for forms of expression.
- Creates movement in response to music.
- Notices what adults do, imitating what is observed and then doing it spontaneously when the adult is not there.
- Uses available resources to create props to support role-play.
Above are some, but not all of our milestones for our 3-4 years old.