What Do Your 3 Year Olds Know??

A friend of mine sent this to me a while back and i think it holds true for a 3 yr old as well: http://www.magicalchildhood.com/articles/4yo.htm
It really spoke to me. Hopefully you'll find it helpful as well.

It sounds like you are doing a good job.
I think counting is great- you can continue with the teens.
I am working on letter recognition with my daughter- she is beginning to be able to pick out letters. We are also working on shapes.

Sounds like your daughter is doing really well for the average 3 year old. A new found friend of mine is getting ready to begin homeschooling her son and he is right where your daughter is. Sounds like you are planning to do some teaching with her...not sure if you are planning to homeschool or just wanting to work with her a bit. Here is what I've learned that has worked wonders-

My daughter turned 3 in November and I started unofficially homeschooling her when she was 1 since she was so inquisitive. I started watching her best friend who was 2 when my daughter was 18 months so I started them in a FREE homeschooling program, letteroftheweek.com. We used the prep curriculum for the 1st 26 weeks and it was AWESOME!! They both learned so much & by the time my friend put her daughter in preschool a year later both she and the teachers were amazed at how far ahead she was. Along with letteroftheweek.com, I incorporated the KUMON Let's Fold, Let's Color, Let's Cut & Tracing books along with the LeapFrog Letter & Word Factory DVDs. By the time my daughter was 2 she knew her shapes, colors, numbers, ABCs, phonics and was beginning to learn advanced shapes and colors. By the time she was 2.5 I'd started introducing KUMON's easy mazes and Uppercase letters, which is when I discovered she knew the difference between upper and lowercase letters. Since she knew her phonics and understood what a word was she started trying to sounds out words and we found by mistake that she could not only identify her name, her dad's and mine but if we verbally spelled something for her she would point to the word. Just before her 3rd birthday she started sounding out words from the BOB Books and is now actually making words from those sounds.

So here's the scoop - my husband really wanted me to homeschool from the beginning and I wasn't so sure. Our daughter is really the one who challenged me from the beginning and being a SAHM allowed me to work with her. I still have Parent's as Teachers come and work with her but have confirmed that she is well ahead of the preschoolers and is at or above a kindergarten level with 3 years until she would be eligible to start kindergarten. So if I wasn't sure if I wanted to homeschool then, I know now I'm committed...at least through elementary school. My point is, I've learned some awesome resources that are pretty much FREE if you are planning to start homeschooling and I love to share those. If you are not planning to homeschool there are still some good resources to help your child out but you'll find that they could be bored by the time they get to preschool, especially if they are one that loves to learn.

Your daughter knows more than most 3 year olds I know! Most all kids by end of kindergarten will know the same stuff as far as counting, numbers, letters, etc. For my son at that age he just picked up all that stuff from having fun - painting, play-doh, board games, etc., but was right on track for his age. Your daughter seems to absorb all this stuff real well! It's terrific that you are involved in your child's learning. As long as you're this involved when she starts school, she will succeed in all subjects. =-)

My son just turned 4 and he can count to 20, missing 13 and 17:)
He knows all his colors and shapes.
ABC's, blurring the LMNOP, sounds like "lellominnow" & swaping T and V
He recognizes only K and W because they are he and his bro's initials.

He knew all of this before preschool and hasn't learned that much more yet.

Hope this helps.

Each one is so different. My oldest could identify most letters, numbers to 10, all colors, and shapes right around 3. He just seemed to pick this stuff up. My 2nd...who will be 3 in about 2 months knows his colors and can almost count to 10. He doesn't know letters or numbers and doesn't really want to learn them. He's not at all interested in this stuff.

my kids recognized shapes, colors, letters, counted and recognized numbers to 20, started writing some letters, throw and catch a ball, before age 4. My oldest was writing half his letters at age 2 and knew most of this before 3 and was reading 3rd grade level when he started kindergarten but that was unusual. What I do know is that this is the age they catch on things fast so it'a a great time to learn these things. What I did was had a magna-doodle and we would write 1 letter at a time and tell them what the letter is and let them erase it then write another one and they loved this time of spending time with the parents but don't push them to do them all at once, start with 3-4 letters at one time but if your child wants to keep doing it then go as far as they want. We did letters, numbers and shapes. As far as colors went we just talked to them and if they were playing with a toy we would say stuff like that is a red truck, blue block, or whatever. Read a story at bedtime. 3 is also a good time to teach them how to hold a pencil properly and cut with scissors. to cut, I show them how to hold the scissors and I hold the paper tight in front of them so it cuts the paper better. Help them put the scissors on the paper and at first help them open and close them but once they get the concept of how to open and close them then hold the paper tight and help them by guiding the paper along with their cutting. you will be amazed at how 5 minutes a day will make a huge difference in what she will learn everyday. Don't push her though because some kids aren't ready for all of this until they are 4 or closer to 4. Go with her cues and see how much she can handle. Puzzles are also good to start at 3.

I'm a big fan of the Scholastic website (www.scholastic.com). If you need any activities, check there, too. Sounds like she is doing great! Have fun learning together!

When a child knows the alphabet song, it does not mean they know the alphabet. I understand that is not a problem for a 3 year old; however, as someone who has worked with dyslexic children, there are 10 year olds who can sing the alphabet song, but they don't actually know the alphabet. If you haven't already, you should buy block capital letters and numbers to teach your child. Young children are physical learners, as are most dyslexic students, so she should be touching and holding the letters when she's learning them. One thing I did with all my students, once they could recognize all the letters, was post the alphabet on the wall and throw a ball back and forth, each of you saying the next letter. You should also teach her how to properly hold a pencil (it may be too early for her to get that exactly right)and make her letters and numbers correctly. My training in Alphabetic Phonics taught me lots of good stuff about kinesthetic learning and games to play. You can probably find some on the internet.

My daughter will be 3 at the end of April. She can count to 20, has known the ABC song since she was 2, can count to 10 in Spanish and knows some other Spanish words, knows most of the major colors, knows the months of the year, knows what city she lives in, knows all her body parts, knows her full name and knows what & where the Eiffel Tower is.

My husband & I are older and she is our only child and we take her everywhere with us, including extensive traveling, so she is exposed to a LOT of things in our lives. Of course, I have been narrating my life to her since she was born. And yes, she is in a daycare that has taught her tons of things too.

Our three year old is exactly the same as yours as to what she knows. She does not recognize any letters or numbers on sight yet, nor can she write them. She doesn't start preschool until the fall and I know she will pick up all of that then, so I'm not overly concerned.

Our 3 year old knows all of his colors, shapes, abc's, and he can count to 20 but skips 17 & 19. He's been able to do this since he's been 2. We aren't planning on sending him to preschool, we just talk to him and play with him alot! He's also really quick at picking things up, so that has made our job alot easier! The other day he said his baby brother was "stupendous!" Lol, he has quite the vocabulary! Just talk to your kid all the time and play lots of games and ask tons of questions! I'm keeping my fingers crosed our 2nd son will be this easy to teach!! :)

My son turned 3 in September and has made leaps and bounds in learning since then. Not sure if it is due to the age or the fact that we changed daycares or both. He can count to 20 and recognize numbers by sight 0-10. He can sing and recognize all his abcs and is now learning what sound pairs with each letter (for instance if I ask him what letter dinosaur starts with he will say duh-duh-letter-D!." He knows all his colors, though he has problems with mixing up black and white at times. He can also spell and write his first name. He is loving puzzles right now and can now do 12-20 piece puzzles without a background with relatively little help. And his drawing is getting much better - i can actually make out what it is he has drawn (car, baby, house, etc.). Hope this helps, but know that kids have their own pace and I have read that they develop in one area at a time, so if she has really great gross motor skills, her fine motor may lag a little. Or if she is great a colors, numbers might be more difficult for a while. Focus on her strengths and interests and the rest will come when she is ready. Good luck!

My 3 year old can identify both upper and lower case letters, recognize her name, and recognize number 1-10, can identify shapes and colors, etc. We started learning uppercase letters over a year ago, when I was trying to teach her cousins (now almost 5) and she picked up on it. I kept flashcards in the car so if we were waiting after school we could go through it with the cousins. Colors I would have to say she picked up from Dora. She has an older sister, so she seems to pick up a lot from when we go over lessons and stuff. You can teach her to identify her first name, then last name. Teach her her phone number...that I taught to my oldest in the car making up a song.

it depends a lot on your situation. whether you work or stay at home, whether she is around other children, if they're older or younger than her, etc. it sounds like she's doing well in general. keep working on things with her, make it fun to learn, and i'm sure she'll just keep soaking it up. colors, numbers (once she masters up to 10, keep going!), letters, what each letter sounds like, shapes, bigger/smaller, rhyming...trying to think what my son and i have talked about. he is three too. just whatever comes to mind as you're out and about, or playing, or whatever. my son knew that a stop sign was an octagon before he could count, from driving around. same with red light/green light. we talk about "what do horses eat? what do birds eat? what do dogs eat?" we play eyespy, what do policemen do (help people), what's your phone number...there's no shortage of things you can teach her! the key is to talk to her a lot. good luck, and of course have fun!

sounds like she's right on track! When you begin letter recognition, begin with not "A", but with the first letter of her name...& build from there.....expanding to include "Mom, Dad, etc". From there, she'll build upon that knowledge & learn most of the alphabet. It's so much easier this way!

I use 1stSchool & other simple resources online, such as NickJr & PBS. When the children are 4, we create an ABC notebook...complete with a letter page, an activity page, & a project page for each letter. All of this is simply printed off these websites, with the projects sometimes as simple as finding leaves for the letter "L".