Skills Check Lists

Marijke, I also looked at this list now again and felt really behind. I googled similiar lists for the age group 3 - 4 year old and found that this list you have is a great list of what stimulation to offer but by no means a measure for what they should be able to do in my opinion. Yikes, my almost 4 year old is nowhere near to counting to 30! She can recognise at least 13 letters in lowercase in the alphabet. She is nowhere even close to getting the idea of currency. I guess they learn at a different pace.

Do you have a fixed work cycle at home where you "work" for certain hours of the day?

My LG is also really keen to learn stuff, it is so amazing to see how they learn. What I love seeing is how she has certain interests in things like dinosaurs, triangles, smelling things, insects, spiders, scorpions and snakes! Wait, did I mention she LOVES PINK AND PRINCESSES!

So today for some reason or another I stumbled onto this check list again. B is now nearly 3y8m and looking at the 3 year old checklist again gives me a great indication of what I still have to do with her.

I took her out of daycare at the start of the December holidays and I see that I still have to work on her ABC's and currency.

Oh how this child loves doing 'school' - I can't keep up!

haha Gloei, don't think we'll be phoning Mensa anytime soon! She's just very 'good' (for lack of a better word) with retaining information. But what I have noticed is that she learns better and quicker when we change the way we think about learning. She was rather 'behind' on knowing her colours so we started incorporating it a lot more, blue sky, green grass, before we'd just call it sky and grass etc. Now with counting we just need to count more things over and over again and of course show her more letters, sounding out short words etc

Now that I am talking about Mensa....

Read this!

www.iol.co.za/lifestyle/family/kids/todd...1082973#.T_19TfWyq_g

Thanks for the article Marijke! I feel the same as you, I hate comparing but often it gives you ideas as to what stimulation your child needs at what age.

I have to say that I also thought the standard of that specific list was quite high!

Should they really be able to count up to 30? I thought it was more important for them to understand that a number has a certain value and when asked to give 5 objects that they should be able to do so?

I would have also freaked out if my child at 2 could phonetically say her name!!
Maybe you should get Mensa's number soon....

LizeP, I guess with B turning 3 at the end of the month we have to start working on that 3 year age group that you quoted.
But really, I don't think I'll be teaching B about US currency, I don't even get it!
She can count to 20, so 30 to go in a year, at least we have a year to get there!
I'm guessing "tells time on the whole hour" is just the hours, because they should be able to recognise the numbers 1 - 12, and big hand on 12 little hand on 3 means 3 doesn't sound like too much, I think - will get back to you on that one later in the year!
And B, she gets B. I've been thinking I've been very lazy and if I had put a little effort into it she might be able to recognise more letters already. Then yesterday I nearly fell off my chair, she sounded out her name to my mother (it's on her bedroom door and she said, look gran b i a n c a) we were both looking at her like she started swearing or something!

Wow, ok... it went better than I expected, but yes, I'm a "do not push" kind of mom. LizeP, let us know what the school says!