3 years to 4 years

By the time your child turns 4 years, he/she has the potential to meet the following learning outcomes.

Literacy

  • Read and Spell foreign words
  • Learn to spell the 2500 First, Basic and Advanced Words
  • Learn to originate ideas and learning to express words in writing

Numeracy

  • Understand numbers up to 1000
  • Working with one and/or two digit numbers (within 100) using Tables, Bar Models, Number Bonds etc

An Average Child’s Developmental Milestones between 3 years and 4 years

  • Your child is experiencing the joy of mastering

Children between 3 and 4 years enjoy being in the know. They enjoy the predictability of reading the same books or solving the same puzzles because they will always know what the next picture is, or how the puzzle ends up looking like.

It is important to change up the books or activities the children are accustomed to doing at this stage so that children also reflect true understanding rather than rely on purely memorizing what they have known before.

By challenging them with variations of the same story or puzzle, they get to experience the thrill of picking up new skills more.

  • Your child is mastering his motor skills

Children between 3 and 4 years are better with both their gross motor and fine motor skills. They will begin to show remarkable improvement from just a few months ago as they are becoming more confident and coordinated in their movements.

Look forward to your child being more active and agile than they were before! Since they will be experiencing the thrill of running faster than before, or climbing better, chances are they will start becoming a handful (if they were not already so) during this period!

  • Your child is beginning to write

Since your child is gaining more control in terms of muscle memory and motor skills in general, this is also the age when they look forward to writing. Grabbing a crayon or a pen will suddenly seem easier than before.

While they will mostly be scrawling squiggly lines for the most part for now, it is a good age to get a child started on learning the strokes of letters, and go through the process expressing themselves through the written word. This will ease them into learning to write in the near future.

  • Your child is understanding counting

While most children have the potential to learn to count before this age, this season is when how and why 1 object corresponds to 1 number will suddenly be more apparent to children. For smaller numbers, children will start understanding counting without over counting or under counting like they did when they were 2 or 3 years old.

  • Your child is beginning to understand the concept of time

As the concept of “amounts” and “how much” becomes more accessible to children this age, do not be surprised if your child of 3 or 4 years start understanding how time works. Even though one does not usually expect children of this age to have a close-to-perfect understanding of time, they start having the concept of the different hours since counting from 1 to 10 begins to feel natural to them.

Do not be surprised if they are struggling to understand how many seconds form a minute and how many minutes form an hour. It can only improve as their understanding of numbers and their values improves.

The Stamford Difference for children between 3 and 4 years

Since children between 3 and 4 years have improved in their ability to understand concepts better, focus for a longer period of time, possess more control over their motor functions and overall coordination, there is more Stamford children can achieve.

Counting this critical period as precious, the consolidation of their foundation proves to be key at this age. With a systematic and clear game plan to maximise a child’s potential during this season, the following includes some of the learning aims children between 3 and 4 can anticipate.

  • Introducing Topics: Length, Mass, Time, Money etc

  • Introduction to Problem Solving

  • Place Values Training

  • Decoding and Encoding Phonics Training

  • Introduction to Writing