3 years
- Children use 900-1000 different words.
- Children use sentences of three or more words: (e.g. “I want to go.” “I go to school today.”).
- Children ask questions like “Who is that?”, “Where did it go?”, and “What do you have?”
- Children talk about experiences they had in the past (e.g. “Remember, we went to Grandma’s house?”).
- Children enjoy telling simple stories.
- Children may not produce all sounds correctly, but put sounds at the beginning and end of words.
- Children speak clearly enough for people outside of their immediate family to understand them most of the time.
- Children enjoy pretending with their toys: (e.g. pretending to cook a meal, feeding a favourite doll).
- Children pay more attention to print, both on the pages in books you read together, and in signs and lists.
- Children follow two-part directions like “Go to the kitchen and get your back pack.” without gestures.
How to make daily routines into language learning opportunities:
- Language learning happens all day long. At this stage, children are learning language very quickly and during everything they do throughout the day.
- When going through your daily activities, try to find some time to encourage children’s creativity through pretending. Children can pretend that they are a server in a restaurant, or a parent of a favourite doll.
- Children, at this stage, enjoy being a helper. Give them small chores to do. This helps them feel good about themselves and also gives them opportunities to learn a whole new vocabulary.
- During meal time, dressing time, and bath time encourage children to talk about what they are doing, and which clothes and foods they prefer. You can use vocabulary like, “Watermelon is juicy, but bananas are squishy.”
- You can plan what you have for dinner and encourage children to join in the conversation. They can talk about the food they like and you can help them to talk about categories of food (e.g. “Apples are fruit.” “Corn is a vegetable.”).
- Give children choices throughout the day. This helps them to become more independent and gives them opportunities to use their words and sentences. (e.g. “What would you like to wear today? It’s raining, so what do you think you need?”).
- Children at this age know most of the words of the songs you have been singing and enjoy leading the singing. Don’t worry if the words aren’t just right. It’s the singing, the sharing, the taking turns and the new words and actions that are most important. When you repeat these songs many times, children learn the correct words, in time.