ELDAs Continuous Assessment Checklist - Age 3 to 4

Guiding Growth: Understanding Early Learning Milestones for 3 to 4-Year-Olds

The age of three to four years marks a period of significant cognitive, social, and emotional development for children. As they transition from toddlerhood to the preschool years, their curiosity expands, and their abilities flourish. To support educators and parents in nurturing this crucial stage, the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for Children from Birth to Four highlights key Early Learning Development Areas (ELDAs).

This article provides a refined overview of comprehensive assessment criteria aligned with the NCF, serving as a vital resource for teachers. It aims to help track a child's holistic progress, identify their individual strengths, and pinpoint specific areas where developmental support can make the greatest impact.

Tracking Progress: Our Child-Centered Assessment Rubrics

Our assessment approach focuses on qualitative evaluation, recognizing that each child's development is a continuous journey, not a rigid set of percentages. This method allows for a deeper understanding of their unique learning path:

Still Needs a Lot of Practice: The child is just beginning to show awareness or minimal engagement with a skill. They require substantial support and repeated opportunities to develop mastery.
Needs Encouragement: The child demonstrates some understanding or makes attempts, but benefits from frequent prompting, guidance, or additional support to consistently perform the skill.
Fulfils Expectations: The child consistently demonstrates the skill independently or with occasional, minimal support, showing a clear and age-appropriate understanding.
Exceeds Expectations: The child consistently demonstrates the skill independently and often applies it in more complex or novel situations, indicating an advanced understanding for their age group.

Key Developmental Areas (ELDAs) for 3 to 4-Year-Olds

1. Well-being (ELDA ONE)

Well-being at this age encompasses physical health, emotional security, and active participation in self-care, building a foundation for resilience.

Being Well-Nourished: Children begin to understand the importance of clean food, noticing and commenting when food has fallen. They show a growing interest in trying new foods and can start identifying differences between healthy and unhealthy options. They also become "little helpers" by assisting in cleaning up spills.
Having Good Health: This involves developing independent hygiene habits. Children can typically manage washing and drying their hands and learn to blow their own nose hygienically with a tissue. They start to understand and articulate basic health and safety rules, such as fire or traffic safety. They show a desire to brush their own teeth competently and can begin to explain simple causes of illness. They also learn to identify their own symptoms when feeling unwell and may ask for medicine from a teacher.
Being Safe and Secure: Children begin to recognize dangerous situations, objects, and symbols, and know to seek adult support. They can state their own name and surname, and often their house number. Crucially, they adhere to safety instructions and follow simple directions when in danger.
Developing Physical Abilities and Interests in Physical Activities: This area highlights advanced gross and fine motor skill development.
- Large Muscles: Children can jump off low steps, climb stairs using alternating feet with a handrail, walk in a line, move quickly around obstacles, and run at an even pace with good turning and stopping abilities. They can walk backward, gallop, and coordinate balance for riding a tricycle or pumping a swing. They can stand on one foot (though unsteadily), roll sideways, and use various body parts for support when balancing. They also show increasing coordination in throwing, catching (large balls with two hands and body), kicking (a stationary ball at least 6 feet forward), and bouncing balls. Skipping, galloping, and running fast become more proficient. When jumping, they may still find it difficult to land on two feet simultaneously.
- Small Muscles: Hand-eye coordination significantly improves, evident in building with blocks, puzzles, stringing beads, using scissors (cutting along a line), drawing shapes, putting pegs in holes, spreading soft butter, and pouring liquids with some spills. They can manipulate clay into shapes like balls and snakes, and begin to show a preference for either their right or left hand. They also learn to hold drawing tools with their fingers rather than a fist.
Building a Sense of Resilience: Children at this age begin to talk about their fears and bothers, placing trust in adults when frightened. They improve their ability to self-calm and start to control impulses when tempted by wrong or dangerous actions, understanding that feelings have causes. They show progress in expressing feelings, needs, and opinions without harming themselves or others, and can accept compromise in conflicts with adult suggestions. They learn when to talk or take action and know who to ask for help when needed.

2. Identity and Belonging (ELDA TWO)

This area focuses on a child's growing self-awareness, independence in self-care, and ability to form meaningful relationships and understand their place within a group.

Awareness as Capable and Confident Learners: Children show increasing interest and independence in exploring their environment, linking together different sensory approaches (shaking, hitting, looking, feeling, tasting, mouthing, pulling, turning, poking) to understand objects. They explore how sounds and colors can be changed. They show confidence in asking adults for help and can concentrate for longer periods (3 to 8 minutes per activity).
Strong Sense of Self-Care: Children become more adaptable to learning personal hygiene, such as washing hands during toilet routines. They take initiative and pride in achieving self-care goals, undressing without assistance (though still needing help with dressing), unbuttoning skillfully, and buttoning slowly. They can wash hands, brush teeth, and use the toilet with growing independence. They also begin to understand the need for rest and physical activity and participate in cleaning up activities, becoming little helpers. They take pride in working independently, experimenting, and asking for assistance when needed, like wanting to complete a puzzle on their own.
Building Strong Relationships: Children start to develop real friendships, even if the concept isn't fully grasped, and offer simple help to peers. They build trust with their teachers and continue to develop preferences for special adults. They become more flexible, showing self-control, and adapting their behavior to suit different routines and situations.
Sense of Group Identity and Celebrating Differences: They begin to make connections between various life experiences and develop a sense of individuality and personal preferences. They participate in appropriate rituals and customs, actively joining in games, outdoor play, and physical fitness activities. They show interest in other children, copying their actions, and can play cooperatively with another child for a time, showing awareness of linguistic, cultural, and religious differences.

3. Communication (ELDA THREE)

Communication at this age involves increasingly complex listening, speaking, early literacy, and various forms of expression.

Listening to Sounds and Speeches: Children can retell favorite stories they have heard and show an increased ability to identify individual sounds and separate syllables in spoken language. They become aware of words that start with the same sound and enjoy new words. They enjoy increasingly complex songs and rhymes, recognizing rhyming words and judging correctly if two words rhyme. Most can clap syllable segments in their own names and enjoy humorous words. They listen attentively, understanding conversations, stories, songs, and poems, following multi-step directions, and identifying vocal changes during reading or talking.
Speaking Using Different Styles of Communication: Children communicate in simple, grammatical sentences, often in a series to relate ideas, and some may even engage in monologues. They take turns in conversations, generally not interrupting the current speaker, though group conversations can still be challenging. Their pronunciation improves significantly, and they begin to initiate conversations. They enjoy language games and rhymes. They start forming complex sentences with correct grammar and vocabulary, including question and negative structures. They can speak sentences of more than five words and initiate telling personal experiences, offering main events but sometimes omitting details. They apply general past tense and plural rules to irregular verbs and nouns. They tell longer and more imaginative stories, memorizing simple predictable texts and reciting them using pictures. They begin to understand that books can be stories, informational, or poems, and that some stories are "pretend." They ask "who," "what," "where," and "why" questions and respond to simple "why" questions. They recognize many books by their covers and can retell simple stories by paraphrasing, also improving their ability to predict what happens next in a story. Their vocabulary expands significantly, acquiring an average of 1500 to 2000 new words during this year, including a major increase in connecting words.
Making Meaning by 'Reading': Children begin to point to individual words and pictures, using knowledge of pictures on book covers to choose books. They hold books right-side up based on knowledge of proper object positions and understand that illustrations carry meaning. They show increased ability to pay attention to stories with identifiable characters and events, and enjoy hearing the same story read multiple times. They increase their awareness of print in their environment, often asking what it "says."
Recording Experiences and Ideas: Children continue to reflect, record, and engage in writing processes. When making marks for writing, they typically explain the intended message. Scribbles evolve into letter-like designs. They develop fine motor skills and pre-writing skills to strengthen their fingers. They start to write or draw letters, including the first few letters of their own name or the alphabet, and draw pictures based on stories. Their drawn letters begin to resemble actual letters, often in unique ways, and some can write their name using good approximations. They start to name letters, learning their names as sight words and attempting to create them. By the end of this year, many can name 5-10 letters, some more than half of uppercase letters, and a few know virtually all uppercase letters. They also begin to associate letter names with their sounds and ask for their stories to be written down.

4. Mathematics (ELDA FOUR)

Mathematics for this age group involves developing a robust understanding of number, counting, classification, problem-solving, and spatial awareness.

Awareness of and Responsiveness to Number and Counting: Children understand the words "one," "two," "three," and "four." They can rote count up to "five" and determine the number of items in a collection of up to five by one-to-one counting. They can name the number that comes after a specific count term from "one" to "nine" when given a running start. They use size terms like "many" and "same" for comparisons and "more" or "fewer" to identify the larger or smaller of two collections. They use fingers to show their age and can write the numbers one to three. They make simple estimations of sums up to five and their subtraction complements. They understand "same" and "different" and can compare objects based on a single attribute. They use ordinal terms "first" and "last," recognize single-digit numerals 0-9, and connect some numerals to number words and quantities, understanding that "0" can mean "none." They enjoy singing number rhymes and songs.
Sorting, Classifying, Making Comparisons, and Solving Problems: Children attempt to solve number problems, determining that one item added makes "two" and one subtracted from "two" makes "one." They can mentally determine sums up to "four" and their subtraction counterparts. They will trade several small items for a larger one and collect relevant data for addressing questions. They classify, label, and sort familiar objects by known groups, moving beyond arbitrary rules to sort by a single feature (e.g., color, shape, size). They can reason "transitively" and use the "larger-number principle" to compare "neighboring" numbers. They can make tallies or use other informal symbols to represent spoken numbers.
Exploring Shape, Space, and Measurement: Children show interest in shapes, can build a 24-piece puzzle, and put together and take apart shapes. They build three-dimensional structures using one or multiple types of items and create pictures using single shapes. They understand and use words representing physical relations or positions (e.g., "over," "under," "between"). They can find items if directions are given and use a model of a room or simple picture maps to locate hidden objects. They understand a sequence of events when clearly explained. They use familiar objects to create patterns, showing interest in sequences and extending simple repeating patterns, including pattern sounds. They place two items according to length, height, or capacity, discovering attributes by filling containers and developing language to describe them. They order objects from smallest to largest. They use everyday language related to time, understanding daily concepts like "morning," "afternoon," "night," "earlier," "later," and "soon." They identify basic concepts of night/day and seasons but may confuse "yesterday," "today," and "tomorrow." They can recite days of the week and seasons (though not tell time) and develop a firm understanding of daily time sequence. They discover basic patterns in the environment and use the terms "tomorrow" and "yesterday." They begin to use mathematical names for solid 3D shapes and flat 2D shapes, understanding the difference between a pyramid and a triangle, or a cylinder and a circle.

5. ELDA FIVE - Creativity

Creativity in this age group is expressed through advanced problem-solving, collaborative imaginative play, and developing artistic and musical skills.

Identifying, Searching for, and Creating Solutions to Challenges through Problem-Solving: Children ask "Why?" more frequently, inquiring about events and their causes. They continue to experiment with movement and relationships with objects, participating in group games and circle dances, and selecting movements that reflect their mood. They accept explanations that movement activities are healthy. They become more capable of trying out different solutions rather than resorting to frustration or crying.
Identifying, Searching for, and Creating Solutions to Challenges through Play and Make-Believe: Children increasingly play in small cooperative groups, recreating home and classroom scenarios through dramatic play. They use dramatic play to cope with fears and use dress-up clothes and real props for realistic role-playing. They grow in their ability to sustain pretend play with other children and play creatively with both language and objects, expressing inventive ideas.
Identifying, Searching for, and Creating Solutions to Challenges through Visual Art: Children start to draw human figures (usually stick figures) and create unplanned art, assigning content after completion. They can describe what they find pleasing about their own art. They cut across a piece of paper and begin to cut along a straight line. They construct objects using boxes and other paper products, participating in making items like paper puppets. They paint shapes using separate colors and choose colors and media that match their mood.
Identifying, Searching for, and Creating Solutions to Challenges through Music, Dance, and Drama: Children engage in group games and circle dances, selecting movements to reflect their mood. They accept explanations that movement activities are healthy. They also participate in making a paper puppet, for example.

6. Knowledge and Understanding of the World (ELDA SIX)

This ELDA focuses on how children actively explore, investigate, and interpret their world, including design, technology, and their sense of time and place.

Children Explore and Investigate Their World: They show interest in having pets and may show interest in giving them food or water.
Children Explore Design, Make Items, and Use Technology: They join construction materials together for balance and purpose. They experiment with different tools and techniques, using exploration as their primary method of learning and practicing "trial and error" to solve problems (e.g., stacking blocks for stability). They collect information through observation, sound, and touch, and classify and sort objects by one property or function. They use a computer keyboard and mouse, though with limited control due to developing hand-eye coordination. They know how to operate simple equipment, showing improved hand-eye coordination in building with blocks, simple puzzles, stringing beads, using scissors, drawing shapes, putting large pegs in holes, spreading soft butter, and pouring liquids with some spills.
Children Explore and Investigate Time and Place: They remember and talk about familiar people and events, drawing on past experiences to describe, compare, and discuss observations. They show understanding of changes over time and use time-related words, noticing weather conditions and associating them with activities (e.g., "It's raining, so I can't go outside"). They use common weather-related vocabulary and are developing awareness of ideas and language related to time. They observe and are curious about their place and the natural world, beginning to make simple representational drawings as a form of data collection. They describe objects by their materials and physical properties, show a beginning understanding of cause-effect relationships (e.g., how water changes clay), and play with water, noticing its flow and how it fills containers. They understand that inanimate objects don't move on their own and need to be acted upon to move. They experience their immediate environment and its materials (rocks, soil, sand), and begin to build vocabulary for natural features (e.g., river, mountain).