3-4 YEAR-OLD

SUNFLOWER MILESTONES

PERSONAL, SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

  • Making relationships
  • 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
  • Self-confidence and self-awareness
  • 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.
  • Managing feelings and behaviour
  • 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

  • Listening and attention
  • 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
  • Understanding
  • 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.
  • Speaking
  • 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

  • Reading
  • 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.
  • Writing
  • 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

  • Numbers
  • 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.
  • Shape, space and measure
  • 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

  • People and communities
  • 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
  • The World
  • Shows care and concern for living things and the environment.

EXPRESSIVE ART

  • Exploring and using media and materials
  • 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.
  • Being imaginative
  • 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.