Nurturing Growth: A Guide to Early Learning Milestones for 2 to 3-Year-Olds
Early childhood is a period of remarkable growth and discovery. For children aged 2 to 3 years, every day brings new opportunities for learning and development. To help educators and parents understand and support this crucial stage, the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for Children from Birth to Four outlines key Early Learning Development Areas (ELDAs).
This guide provides a comprehensive overview of the assessment criteria for this age group, serving as a vital tool to track a child's holistic progress, celebrate individual strengths, and identify areas where additional support might be beneficial.
Understanding a Child's Journey: Assessment Rubrics
Our assessment approach focuses on continuous progress, reflecting the dynamic nature of early childhood development rather than rigid percentages. We use a qualitative rubric to capture the nuances of a child's learning:
- Still Needs a Lot of Practice: The child is just beginning to show awareness or minimal engagement with a skill. They require significant support and many opportunities to practice.
- 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 advanced understanding for their age group.
Key Developmental Areas (ELDAs) for 2 to 3-Year-Olds
ELDA 1: Well-being
Well-being encompasses a child's physical health, emotional security, and overall nourishment.
- Being Well-Nourished:
- Children begin to recognize new and different foods.
- They start to notice similarities and differences in tastes and appearances.
- They develop an understanding of nutritious foods and can assist with serving or setting out utensils.
- Children enjoy both local and indigenous foods, adapting to family eating practices.
- Having Good Health:
- Children imitate washing their face and hands.
- They imitate brushing their teeth.
- They can wash and dry their hands relatively well, often without help.
- Children learn to ask for their nose to be wiped when necessary and can use a tissue with some assistance.
- They begin to understand basic safety rules and pay attention to safety instructions, though they may not always obey.
- Being Safe and Secure:
- Children show a natural curiosity, wanting to explore everything in their environment using their senses, often asking "What's inside?" or "Does this make a noise?"
- While often unaware of dangers, they will listen to warnings and pay attention to safety instructions.
- Developing Physical Abilities and Interests in Physical Activities:
- Large Muscles: Children engage in rolling, crawling, creeping, walking, jumping, running, and climbing. They enjoy pushing boxes and pulling toys, often pretending to be animals while moving on hands and knees. They can independently get into a chair and walk up and down stairs with one foot per step while holding a handrail. Riding toys helps strengthen their gross motor skills.
- Ball Skills: They attempt to kick a large ball, kicking smaller balls forward.
- Rhythmic Movement: Children explore various ways to move their bodies rhythmically to music, such as dancing.
- Running: While they run well, falls are frequent. They begin to understand leading with one foot for galloping.
- Climbing: Children climb low steps and low walls or equipment. They can crawl through tunnels, go over and under low obstacles, and move swiftly up and down ramps. They also enjoy climbing and balancing on higher objects like tabletops and chairs, which requires supervision for safety.
- Jumping: They can jump off one step with both feet together.
- Walking/Standing: Children may hold hands with an adult when walking on a low beam or stepping over ladder rungs. They can stand on one foot with assistance and enjoy standing and walking on tiptoe.
- Small Muscles:
- They begin to use scissors and other tools with more control, cutting playdough with safety scissors and holding a paintbrush with improved control.
- Children push and pull toys, and some can ride a tricycle using pedals.
- They enjoy tossing or dropping a ball or beanbag into a bin and attempt to catch a thrown ball by extending their arms.
- Children thread large beads and attempt to follow patterns with stringing beads and shapes.
- They can build towers of five or six blocks.
- Building Resilience:
- Children are likeable and loveable, extending trusting relationships to other adults and frequent playmates.
- They show concern and are glad to do nice things for others, expanding their understanding of others' feelings and offering basic help.
- Children are respectful of themselves and others, improving their ability to calm down and recognizing emotions when labeled by adults.
- They begin to be responsible for their actions, paying attention to instructions and helping with small tasks.
- When conflicts arise, they look to adults for comfort, showing confidence that things will be alright.
ELDA 2: Identity and Belonging
This area focuses on a child's self-awareness, self-care, and ability to form relationships.
- Awareness as Capable and Confident Learners:
- Children build skills, characteristics, interests, and preferences that enhance their confidence, primarily exploring through their senses.
- They develop curiosity about people, places, and objects, gathering information using all five senses.
- They learn about themselves from adults who highlight their strengths and areas for development, recognizing feelings when labeled.
- Strong Sense of Self-Care:
- Children want to participate in routines like dressing, undressing, and cleaning, often assisting adults.
- They use talk and gestures to express likes and dislikes, sharing personal experiences about food or family.
- They show a strong will to learn and do things on their own, while still feeling supported by adults nearby.
- Building Strong Relationships:
- Children learn about their own abilities from others.
- Their social skills increase through interactions with adults and other children, forming favorite playmates and bonds.
- They actively seek out the company of others to share experiences, often enjoying parallel play (playing alongside others without significant interaction).
- Sense of Group Identity and Celebrating Differences:
- They extend trusting relationships to other adults and frequent playmates.
- They show awareness of others' feelings and offer basic help.
- They improve their ability to self-regulate emotions and recognize feelings when labeled.
- They begin to take responsibility for their actions, paying attention to instructions and helping with small tasks.
- They look to adults for comfort during conflicts, assured that situations will resolve.
ELDA 3: Communication
Communication covers listening, speaking, early literacy, and expressing ideas.
- Listening to Sounds and Speech:
- Children pay attention when spoken to and understand common phrases in routine situations, though their attention span may be short.
- They love listening to stories, especially predictable text books, and enjoy imitating sounds from their environment.
- They delight in nursery rhymes and begin to recite familiar phrases from songs and books.
- Children can follow one- and two-step verbal instructions.
- They ask "What's that?" and "What's he/she doing?" and can answer some "what" and "who" questions.
- Speaking Using Different Styles:
- They use up to 50 words, often chiming in on rhyming words during story time. By 30 months, an average child says about 570 words.
- Children recognize more words than they can say, with their vocabulary expanding to include nouns, action words, descriptive words, pronouns, and location words.
- They start putting two or three words together and enjoy finger-play activities that involve body parts.
- They use personal pronouns like "me" and "mine," often in an egocentric way.
- They can carry on simple conversations, making statements about their experiences and mimicking the spoken language styles of familiar adults.
- By 18 months, they say several single words, and by 24 months, they understand 500 to 700 words, acquiring one or two new words daily. They learn quantifiers and question words.
- They begin to formulate clear, short sentences, though they may still lack some parts of speech.
- Making Meaning by 'Reading':
- Children continue to 'read' books and environmental print, turning pages one by one, retelling simple stories using pictures, and naming items in books.
- They recognize that writing is different from pictures and identify frequently seen signs and symbols.
- They start to recognize that reading begins from top to bottom and left to right, holding books correctly.
- Recording Experiences and Ideas:
- Children speak about their experiences (e.g., "I like..."), with pronunciation improving considerably. They enjoy chanting and repeating syllables to explore language sounds.
- They act out their experiences in make-believe play, enjoying playing alongside other children.
- They draw circles, faces, and human figures, often naming them as familiar people. They can draw objects they've interacted with, like balls.
- They make and name scribbles as 'writing,' using a wider variety of marks, some resembling zig-zags or linear rows. They show an emerging understanding of writing's purpose, sometimes presenting scribbles as "a letter" or their "name," even if not fully conventional.
ELDA 4: Mathematics
Mathematics in early childhood involves developing an awareness of numbers, counting, sorting, shapes, and measurements.
- Awareness of Number and Counting:
- Children attempt to say some counting words, often imitating simple counting rhymes without full understanding of quantity. They understand "three" and a few may grasp "four."
- They can verbally count by ones up to "three" and in correct order up to "five."
- They can nonverbally determine that one item added makes "two," and one item taken away from "two" makes "one."
- They typically know and count body parts when pointed to and can show their age using fingers.
- Developing Awareness of Categorizing:
- Children classify and sort toys by two colors, and sort cups, plates, and dishes.
- Using Number Language:
- They understand words like "one," "two," "many," "same," and "more."
- Experimenting with Symbols and Marks:
- Children create nonrepresentational art, making random marks and scribbles.
- Sorting, Classifying, Comparing, and Problem-Solving:
- They make attempts at logical thinking, completing increasingly complex puzzles (up to 12 pieces).
- They develop a sense of time through daily routines (e.g., knowing nap time).
- They participate in obstacle courses and build structures with blocks.
- They begin to understand the sequencing of events.
- Children want to explore their environment, recovering hidden objects, and exploring by filling and emptying containers.
- They describe attributes like "big," "small," "long," "short," "heavy," "light," "fast," and "slow."
- They understand the concepts of "same" and "different."
- Exploring Shape, Space, and Measurement:
- Children show greater awareness of shapes and patterns, knowing primary colors and basic shapes.
- They match shapes, initially by size and orientation, then with different sizes and orientations.
- They understand and use words representing physical relations or positions (e.g., "over," "under," "between").
- They enjoy auditory patterns.
- They categorize objects by properties like size or shape, able to sort, order, and build with solids, and sequence by size.
- They play with shapes and make simple arrangements, creating two-dimensional shapes and three-dimensional buildings with symmetry.
ELDA 5: Creativity
Creativity in this age group involves problem-solving through experimentation, play, and artistic expression.
- Identifying, Searching for, and Creating Solutions through Problem-Solving:
- Children experiment with solutions to movement challenges (e.g., climbing, dancing, rolling).
- They experiment with how objects move by pushing, pulling, dropping, or sinking them.
- While they may become frustrated and cry or get angry when unable to solve a problem, they look to adults for comfort.
- They ask "What's that?" and "What's he/she doing?"
- Identifying, Searching for, and Creating Solutions through Play and Make-Believe:
- Children increasingly engage in cooperative play, finding enjoyment in explorations with peers.
- They play more complex make-believe games for longer periods, often centered around home life and relationships with adults.
- They use gestures and hand movements to convey meaning during finger plays and imitate family roles.
- They expand their use of objects, art materials, and toys in new and unexpected ways, and extend doll play with props representative of daily life.
- They love to create ideas and structures with cardboard boxes, string, sticks, and stones.
- Identifying, Searching for, and Creating Solutions through Visual Art:
- Children start to draw recognizable circles, lines, and human face shapes (refer to writing under Communication for more detail). They create nonrepresentational art, showing a preference for "favorite" colors and styles.
- They roll clay into "snakes" and balls, pounding, squeezing, and pulling it.
- They start to cut out and paste, using plastic scissors to cut clay.
- Identifying, Searching for, and Creating Solutions through Music, Dance, and Drama:
- Children enjoy dancing to music from the radio and clapping, often singing aloud and echoing the feelings of others in voice and song. They request to hear favorite music repeatedly.
- They play instruments like drums, shakers, rattles, and triangles, understanding that shaking, banging, and plucking create musical sounds.
- They listen for sounds and rhythms (e.g., high, low, fast, slow, three and four beats) and respond with body movements to changes in music's tempo, loudness, and style.
- They enjoy combining dancing and playing instruments, shaking and manipulating rhythm instruments while dancing to a beat.
ELDA 6: Knowledge and Understanding of the World
This area encompasses a child's exploration and investigation of their immediate environment and the broader world.
- Exploring and Investigating Their Life World:
- Children focus on features of objects or how to do something, enjoying repetition. They may wonder "What's inside?", "Does this make a noise?", or "Can I lift this?".
- They enjoy playing with water (pouring, splashing) and games that follow specific patterns.
- They use others to help them make sense of things, asking adults for help when needed.
- Exploring Design, Making Items, and Using Technology:
- Children are interested in pushing and pulling things and begin to build. They experiment with how objects move (push, pull, sink, manipulate).
- They investigate to find out how things work, gathering information using all five senses and playing with toy telephones.
- They show interest in turning on and operating electronic items, building vocabulary for talking about sound and light characteristics (e.g., loud, dark), and wanting to explore toy telephones.
- Exploring and Investigating Time and Place:
- Children begin to make associations between actions and the sequence of routines.
- They understand time in experience-based ways, such as "now," "later," and "before."
- They show interest in their world and models of the world. They identify various properties (e.g., hard vs. soft), learn to identify some plants, and name parts of animal bodies.
- They identify characteristics, especially sounds, size, and color, and learn names for various body parts.
- They may know that pets need food or plants need water because they help with these tasks.
- They notice different kinds of things and make basic comparisons (e.g., "The dog is bigger than the cat.").
- They play with sand, dirt, and water (wet and dry).
- They develop associations with particular weather conditions (e.g., needing boots when there's snow) and learn the names for the sun and the moon.
This comprehensive overview aims to provide valuable insights into the incredible developmental journey of 2 to 3-year-olds, empowering educators and parents to support and celebrate every milestone.
