Receptive Language / What The Child Understands

• Understands pronouns (mine, yours)

• Responds to “big”, “little”

• Understands action words (jump, kick kiss, throw, etc.)

• Beginning to follow 3-step directions

• Understands “Why?” questions

• Understands gender (boy, girl)

• Understands 3 word sentences, but context and past experience determine the meaning, does not understand word order yet

• Follows 2-step related directions – Examples: “Go get your shoes and put them on.” “Get your bear and give him a hug.”

Emergent Literacy Skills

• Looks at, listens to, and shows appreciation of books

Phonological Awareness

• Awareness of rhyming emerges

Social/Play

• Uses toys functionally

• Seeks adults’ help

• Initiates interactions using signs, symbols, or words

• Enters play groups with adult assistance

• Plays for at least 10 minutes

• Gives up a toy easily when they are done with it

• Attends during group activities

• Symbolic Play Level increases rapidly, pretending, improves

Level 3 (24-36 months) – Extends pretending to involve objects of action or other people/dolls – Examples: Feeds doll. Pretends to sweep the floor. Moves car/block and makes car sounds.

Level 4 (24-36 months) – Pretends to do actions, followed by doing it on others, and then by related actions – Examples: Combs own air, then combs mom’s hair.   Kisses doll, puts it to bed, puts blanket on.

Level 5 (24-36 months) – Plans ahead what actions to do and tells with words or gestures.  Example:  Finds the iron, sets it down, searches for the cloth, tossing aside several objects. When cloth is found, irons it. 

36 MONTHS (3 Years)

Expressive Language / What The Child Says

• Asks “Who?”, “Whose?”, “Why?”, “How many?”

• Asks “How?” at 3 years 6 months

• Uses “hard/soft”, “hot/cold”, “over/under”

• Uses pronouns  (I, you, he, she, they)

• Uses at least one state of being/auxiliary verb  (is, am, are)

• Says plural “s, ies” on the ends of words

• MLU (Mean Length of Utterance/Average Sentence Length)  3 years = 3.2 words,  3.5 years = 3.8 words

Uses These Grammar Parts/ Brown’s Morphemes:

• Possessive “s” on the ends of words (26-40 months) – Example: “Mommy’s shoes.”

• Uncontractible copula (27-39 months) – Examples: “Here it is.”  “There it went.”

• Articles “A” and “The” (28-46 months)  – Examples: “I see a kitty.”  “Throw the ball.”

• Regular Past Tense “-ed” (26-48 months)  Example: “He pushed me.”

• 3rd Person Singular (26-48 months)  – Example: “Mommy jumps.”

• Contractible copula (29-49 months)  – Example: “That’s mine.”

• Irregular 3rd person (28-50 months) – Examples: does, has

• Contractible auxillary (30-50 months) – Example:  “Daddy’s drinking juice.”

• Sentences Become More Complex With These Forms – gonna, havta, let’s, let me, to + verb = want to jump, like to play, and, but, or, know, wonder, think, pretend, hope, show, forget

Receptive Language / What The Child Understands

• Prepositions (beside, in, in-front-of, next-to, on, over, out, under)

• Understands “hard/soft” and “hot/cold”

• Answers “yes”  “no” questions correctly

• Answers basic “who”, “what”, “where”, “whose”, and “why” questions

• Understands basic color words

• Understands basic kinship terms (aunt/uncle, grandma/grandpa, brother/sister)

• Understands basic shapes (circle, square, triangle)

• Follows 2-step unrelated directions, in order (ability to follow more complex directions increases rapidly over the next year) – Example:  “Go get the ball and knock on the door.”

• Understands difference between single and plural words – Examples: You say, “Get the cup,” and they get one cup.  You say, “Get the cups” and they get all of the cups.

• Understands “Same/Different”  – Example: You say, “Get the socks that are different” and they will choose the socks that don’t match.

• Understands “not” – Example: You say, “Get the crayon that is not red,” and they choose a crayon of a different color.

• Understands “his/hers” – Example: You say, “Get his shoes,” and they will choose the boy shoes.

• Answer “what” questions that require inference (using facts they already know or see to make their “best guess”) –  Example: You ask, “What do you think happened to that boy’s knee?”, while looking at a picture of a boy with a hurt knee standing next to a bike.  Child answers, “He fell off his bike.”

• Knows the functions of objects and can answer questions about the use of objects – Examples: Ask “What do we do with scissors?”  They answer, “cut…”

• Groups items by category – Examples: Puts all the “big” toys here and “small” toys there.

Narrative Development