Developmental Milestones
Birth to Three Years Old - babies, toddlers and young children will be learning to:
- Enjoy songs and rhymes, tuning in and paying attention.
- Join in with songs and rhymes, copying sounds, rhythms, tunes and tempo.
- Say some of the words in songs and rhymes.
- Copy finger movements and other gestures.
- Sing songs and say rhymes independently, for example, singing whilst playing.
- Enjoy sharing books with an adult.
- Pay attention and respond to the pictures or the words.
- Have favourite books and seek them out, to share with an adult, with another child, or to look at alone.
- Repeat words and phrases from familiar stories.
- Ask questions about the book. Make comments and shares their own ideas.
- Develop play around favourite stories using props.
- Notice some print, such as the first letter of their name, a bus or door number, or a familiar logo.
- Enjoy drawing freely.
- Add some marks to their drawings, which they give meaning to. For example: “That says mummy.”
- Make marks on their picture to stand for their name.
3 and 4-year-olds will be learning to:
- Understand the five key concepts about print:
- print has meaning
- print can have different purposes
- we read English text from left to right and from top to bottom
- the names of the different parts of a book
- page sequencing
- Develop their phonological awareness, so that they can:
- spot and suggest rhymes
- count or clap syllables in a word
- recognise words with the same initial sound, such as money and mother
- Engage in extended conversations about stories, learning new vocabulary.
- Use some of their print and letter knowledge in their early writing. For example: writing a pretend shopping list that starts at the top of the page; writing ‘m’ for mummy.
- Write some or all of their name.
- Write some letters accurately.
Children in reception will be learning to:
- Read individual letters by saying the sounds for them.
- Blend sounds into words, so that they can read short words made up of known letter– sound correspondences.
- Read some letter groups that each represent one sound and say sounds for them.
- Read a few common exception words matched to the school’s phonic programme.
- Read simple phrases and sentences made up of words with known letter–sound correspondences and, where necessary, a few exception words.
- Re-read these books to build up their confidence in word reading, their fluency and their understanding and enjoyment.
- Form lower-case and capital letters correctly.
- Spell words by identifying the sounds and then writing the sound with letter/s.
- Write short sentences with words with known sound-letter correspondences using a capital letter and full stop.
- Re-read what they have written to check that it makes sense.